Stereolithography of acrylic lenses?

[CalculatorDave]

Good morning,

Has anyone worked with a plastic rapid-prototyping company that can quickly make acrylic lenses? The ability to make refractive optics using STL appears limited, due to the "step-wise" structure of an STL part. Neverthless, I would like to find a company with this capability.

Thank you,

SD

 

[MikeHalloran]

My favorite modelmaker could bang out a small batch in a few hours, using a radius generator and a good lathe. Given some manual polishing, his lenses were pretty decent.

I'd expect STL to produce _really_ crappy lenses, both because of the stepwise geometry inherent, and because of the difficulty of getting the lens' axial thickness correct, which is fairly critical.

Given the amount of polishing needed on _any_ STL part, you'd basically be using a fancy and expensive process to make very rough lens blanks.

If you don't care much about imaging, you might be able to make a useful lens with SLA by putting the Z axis on a diameter of the lens, building slowly.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[MacGyverS2000]

I would not consider STL as an appropriate process for lenses due to the points Mike already mentioned...

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[btrueblood]

I'll third that. We purposely built a prototype clear STL part with an optical "window" in an area where a flat could be allowed; the result even after polishing was a fairly wavy and distorted image. It was moderately useful for its purpose, but only after we'd mapped the distortion quite painstakingly.