Optical Fabrication

Abstract

Traditional optical fabrication processes utilize abrasive grinding, lapping to shape the glass optics and polishing to achieve an optical surface finish. The introduction of numerical control technology has resulted in higher productivity and better quality for glass optical fabrication. For medium‐ to high‐volume production, injection molding of aspherical plastic lenses is more economically feasible. Very recently, compression molding process has also emerged as a possible solution to high‐volume glass aspherical lens manufacturing. For low‐volume applications that include optical molds and high‐precision optics, special polishing techniques have been developed.

A high volume precision compression molding process of glass diffractive optics by use of a micromachined fused silica wafer mold and lowTgoptical glass

“…The DOE molding experiments discussed in this paper were performed on a Toshiba GMP 211 V machine at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology (IPT). The detailed descriptions of the press and glass molding process can be found elsewhere [3,4,13]. The focus of this paper is to study the implementation of the glass molding process to DOE fabrication.…”

“…Currently, these optical components are either fabricated using cleanroom micromachining technology or a direct ultraprecision machining process; therefore, the manufacturing cost remains very high. The method discussed in this paper is different from many traditional fabrication processes [1][2][3], where instead of direct manufacturing, a replication method based on the compression glass molding process is presented [3,4]. In previous publications, an experimental study and numerical simulation of the compression glass molding process have been described [3,4].…”

“…The method discussed in this paper is different from many traditional fabrication processes [1][2][3], where instead of direct manufacturing, a replication method based on the compression glass molding process is presented [3,4]. In previous publications, an experimental study and numerical simulation of the compression glass molding process have been described [3,4]. It was shown that various sizes of diffraction limited aspherical glass lenses can be molded using the compression molding technology.…”