It takes more than just the latest optical manufacturing technology to produce aspheres to high precision and production quantity levels. Manufacturing aspheres is a complex process with many variables, which is why it is crucial to team up with a company that not only employs the latest TECHNOLOGY, but also has the required asphere manufacturing EXPERTISE. Vertex Optics has operators with decades of experience in producing aspheres and are equipped with cutting-edge deterministic grinding and sub-aperture polishing machines, as well as high precision metrology for manufacturing precision aspheres cost-effectively. This combination gives our customers confidence that they will receive aspheres that meet their precision and production requirements, no matter how mild or difficult their asphere job may be.
For generating the aspheric surface, Vertex counts on the OptiPro eSX 150 CNC optical grinding machine. With 5-axes of computer-controlled motion and generous machine travels, Vertex is able to generate rough and fine grind surfaces for aspheres up to 150mm in diameter. For aspheres up to 300mm, Vertex has the capability of the OptiPro OptiSonic 550X ultrasonic machining center at our disposal.
For polishing aspheres to precision levels, Vertex utilizes the sub-aperture polishing process known as UltraForm Finishing (UFF) found on the OptiPro UFF 300 and Triumph polishing machines. The flexibility of this process allows us to polish aspheres up to 300mm to specifications as precise as 1 Fr. PV, 0.1 mm/mm slope, and surface roughness of 20 angstroms. Figure and slope measurements are performed using an Optipro Ultrasurf 4X 300 non-contact metrology system.
The eSX 150, OptiSonic 550X, Triumph, and Ultrasurf 4X 300 all feature easy to use software to streamline the asphere manufacturing process. A variety of materials can be processed on these platforms as well, including optical glasses, crystals, and ceramics.