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.