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2008
Conference Paper
Titel
Optimized production of complex shaped optical components via presscion glass molding
Alternative
Optimale Herstellung komplex geformter optischer Teile mittels Präzisions-Glas-Formen
Abstract
Our everyday life is associated with many leading edge technologies, like automotive industry, laser technology and life science. The key position for the improvement of these technologies is the production of required complex shaped optical components with high accuracy. For example, for the high performance diode laser, fast axis or slow axis collimation lenses with high presicion are required. With this lenses the light beam from the emitter is collimated, thereby the beam divergency is reduced and the beam quality is increased. One promising manufacturing process of such components is the presicion glass molding. Different to conventional machining technologies like grinding and polishing, the glass parts are formed in one process step. After heating up the raw parts, the glass is pressed under load into its final shape. Due to different thermal expansion of mold and glass material, the final shape of the glass differs from the mold shape after the molding process. In this paper, investigations into the with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of optimized production of complex shaped optical components will be presented. With the use of the simulation the glass shrinkage can be calculated without any try out molding activities. On the basis of this simulation result, this shrinkage can be directly compensated by mold manufacturing. The process chain for production of complex shaped optical components consists of four main steps: Design, Mold making, Molding, Measurement. The FEA of the precision glass molding process is accomplished on the basis of three models: Thermal model, Structural model, Multi-physics model.