Development of a laser based process chain for manufacturing freeform optics

The current state of the development of a laser based process chain for manufacturing fused silica optics is presented. In a first step fused silica is ablated with laser radiation to produce the geometry of the optics. A subsequent polishing step reduces the surface roughness and a third step uses micro ablation to remove the last remaining redundant material. Although the process chain is still under development, the ablation of fused silica already reaches ablation rates above 20 mm3/s with a resulting surface roughness of Ra < 5 μm and the polishing process is able to significantly reduce this roughness.