Rapid manufacturing of plastic aspheric optical lens.

This paper presents a new process to rapid manufacture the plastic aspheric optical lens. A bridge tooling was developed for fabricating the mold inserts of an aspheric lens using silicone rubber materials. Epoxy-based composites were used to fabricate mold inserts of an aspheric optical lens. Z-axis shrinkage error was investigated after plastic injection molding and compensated to the designed aspheric lens. In comparison with conventional method for fabricating a pair of mold inserts of a new plastic lens, a cost reduction of 75.02% and a time saving of 77.78% can be achieved. The deformation improvement percentage is about 92.48%. This technology can be used to compensate the z-axis deformation efficiently due to shrinkage error of plastics in molding aspheric lens. Aspheric optical lens can be produced rapidly and cost-effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]