Esco Optics Is Now Fabricating Acylindrical Lenses

Esco Optics is pleased to announce the manufacturing capability of Aspheric Cylindrical Lenses. With the use of OptiPro CNC UFF Polishing machines, Esco is producing and repeating precision A-Cylinders of various materials and sizes. This product is currently is being offered as new line of custom optics, and Esco is quoting both prototype and production quantities.

How do Acylindrical Lenses differ from Aspherical Lenses?

A plano-convex aspherical lens focuses an incident ray in two dimensions to a precise focal point, while A-Cylindrical Lenses focus the incident ray in one dimension along a linear axis parallel to the cylindrical or acylindrical surface. The resultant focused beam is a line instead of a single point.essay writing service reviews

The typical configuration of an aspherical cylinder (or acylinder) is plano-convex. The non-plano surface is polished using aspheric coefficients in relation to a best fit cylinder radius, thus reducing spherical aberration in one dimension. Plano-concave Acylinders are also possible but not as common. Acylindrical lenses can be manufactured using high index materials to aid in the reduction of chromatic aberration.

Benefits and applications of an acylindrical lens include:

• Collimation of laser diode fast axis.
• Optimum in line focus by reducing spherical aberration on one dimension.
• Increase the performance of a system requiring magnification in one dimension.
• A plano-convex acylindrical lens can be optimized for infinite conjugate configurations
• Create a thin line profile when using a monochromatic light source.
• Short focal length, thus reducing the optical path length of a particular system.

Esco Optics fabricates A-Cylindrical components from virtually any material, with cylinder lengths upwards of 200mm. To ensure the high accuracy that is generally required with Aspheric Cylinders, Esco uses an OptiPro OptiTrace 3D Profilometer. Esco is able to polish A-Cylinders to an RMS wavefront error of less than 0.5 microns, and surface quality of 10-5 depending on the material.

Please contact Sales@EscoOptics.com for more information regarding your A-Cylindrical needs.