Single Point Diamond Turning: EO Build-to-Print Manufacturing

[agstechnicalsupport]

Thank you for posting this beautiful video on Single Point Diamond Turning. Edmund Optics is one of the leaders in this industry. Maybe some folks are wondering whether glass can be machined with a CNC. Apparently, yes it can, but it is trickier than metals and metal alloys and instead of carbide tips used in metal machining, generally diamond tips are used on lathes and machining centers. Ultrasonic machining technique is also commonly used. Other techniques specific to optical industry and precision ceramic manufacturing need to be used for many optical components such as lenses, mirrors, prisms....etc. Those techniques include grinding, lapping, polishing using slurries with various grit size. Generally, you start with grinding and go down to polishing and lapping that is carried out with finer grit slurry to finish up the manufacturing process of optical components. Manufacturing precision optics is more demanding than metal parts manufacturing, because optical surfaces must be clean and very smooth. Optical component geometries require high accuracy and small tolerances because when mounted, any small misalignment or tilt can deflect, reflect, refract the light in unwanted directions. Also since optical components are often coated with metal or metal oxides to act as mirror or filter, the surface roughness has to be very low to allow smoothly coated surfaces. Also cleanliness and precautions against contamination are critical and there are many cleaning steps involved. A small mistake or contamination, scratch, chip, defect or else can easily render the final product as scrap and repairing optical components is much more difficult or impossible as compared to metal parts. Especially when optics is made for high power laser applications, any small defect or contamination can cause a local burn at the defect / contamination site and result in downtime of the apparatus in which the optics is mounted. Please visit our Youtube channel by clicking our logo on the left for other good content on manufacturing techniques and engineering content.

[ThompPL]

0:25 . . . Confusing "Precision" with "Accuracy" . . . the later is much, much more difficult !