Aspherical plastic lens injection molding warpage and opto-mechanical analysis

The aspherical plastic lens is commonly used in commercial optical products. The injection molding process introduces warpage and stress residue into the aspherical plastic lens. Mold flow software is generally used in injection molding simulation and successfully predicts molding warpage results. This paper attempts to link mold flow and optical design software by opto-mechanical analysis. The lens surface warpage can apply the Zernike polynomial and transform it to the optical aberration. Meanwhile, the injection molding process and the operation parameters also affect the plastic lens warpage value. Thus, according to optical software, the injection molding process parameters will affect lens optical performance. The plastic lens aberration results can evaluate the lens warpage effect and optimize the injection molding process parameters. Further, by reversing lens warpage aberration in the plastic lens model, it can preliminarily compensate for the warpage error in the lens design process.