This article mainly introduces the characteristics of spherical lenses, aspherical lenses, and the processing of aspherical lenses.

Spherical lenses have a fixed curvature from center to edge, whereas aspheric lenses have a continuous change in curvature from center to edge. In various types of lenses, in order to ensure optical performance, it is necessary to correct aberrations. If only spherical lenses are used for correction, many lens combinations are required to correspond to the technical requirements of the lens. The curvature radius of the aspheric lens varies with the central axis, so the number of optical components used can be reduced, thereby reducing the design cost.

Aspheric optical parts have become indispensable optical devices in military, civil and aerospace fields due to their unique optical properties and better imaging effects.

The aspheric surface processing technology is mainly divided into four parts: rough blank production, grinding and molding, polishing processing, and inspection of each process.

First, according to the design requirements, the spherical blank is processed. Select the appropriate fixture according to the size of the blank, and then follow the basic processes of rough grinding, fine grinding and polishing of aspheric surface processing. After the aspherical surface is milled, the profiler should be used to detect the surface shape, and the deviation of the surface shape should be corrected according to the detection results. After repeated inspections and corrections, the important part of ensuring the accuracy of the surface shape comes to the polishing process. The purpose is to achieve the specified optical quality standard on the basis of fine grinding.

At present, due to the wide application of optical elements in various fields, the traditional processing methods of aspheric lenses have been unable to meet the needs of today’s market in terms of processing efficiency and processing cost. With the rapid development of ultra-accurate processing technology, the emergence of high-precision machine tools and the combination of computer technology have made a breakthrough in the processing technology of aspheric optical components.

This technology uses an ultra-accurate milling and grinding machine to grind and form the optical element blank, and then uses computer simulation polishing to determine reasonable polishing parameters, select the polishing parameters to calculate the motion trajectory and residence equation, and reduce the surface accuracy while ensuring the surface shape. The surface roughness of the components meets the processing quality requirements of optical components.