Precision Glass Molding (PGM)

RPO is the only optical fabrication company currently using Precision Glass Molding technology to rapidly produce aspheric lenses. The proprietary approach provides significant cost and lead time advantages for high volume production. Today at RPO, we are producing custom molded aspheres for market-leading, high-volume applications in sizes from 1mm to 60mm.


Aspheric Glass Molding and Overview

The highly repeatable PGM process is accomplished by heating and press-forming optical grade glass blanks (preforms) using ultra precision tooling. RPO’s vertical integration allows for in-house manufacturing of all tooling, molds, preform fabrication, centering, and AR coating. The molding process produces an optic that has a free form edge, and when necessary, a secondary operation of centering defines the finished diameter. These molded lenses can have spherical, aspheric, bi-aspheric and plano surfaces.


 

Aspheric Advantages


  • Reduction in weight and number of optical elements with more compact design
  • Improved performance i.e. MTF
  • Molded Aspheres can improve tolerances such as tilt and alignment, providing more tolerance budget
  • Ease of Assembly – molded-in features provide very accurate mounting features


With the exception of a few glass types, many varieties of glass can be used to manufacture glass molded optics at RPO. Download our Product Catalog to review our preferred glass types and learn more about our glass molding process.


 

Molded Glass Collimating Optics

Rochester Precision Optics produces standard aspheric lenses in a wide range of focal lengths and numerical apertures, which provide diffraction-limited performance.


Standard catalog lenses are offered with three broadband AR coatings, covering wavelengths from 400nm to 1600nm. Custom broadband coatings and V-coatings can also be provided for your specific application.