Additive Manufacturing of Optical Elements

As part of OPT243: Optical Fabrication and Testing at UR, we were tasked with a research paper exploring some facet of optical fabrication/testing. Machines aimed at enabling creativity like CNC mills and 3D printers resonate very deeply with me every since my experience in high school robotics. They are a very significant part of who I am as an engineer and I think that developing these technologies is important for driving our world forward. We spent a large portion of the OPT243 class discussing both conventional and CNC subtractive manufacturing of optical elements, but something that you rarely hear about is additive manufacturing and its interface with optical elements production.

My paper focuses on three main additive technologies: Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), and Selective Laser Sintering/Melting (SLS/SLM). The paper analyzes the optical quality of elements produced using these technologies, some limitations of these technologies as they stand, and the cost and accessibility of these technologies compared to subtractive processes.

The class paper can be found below. You will notice at one point a reference to a hobbyist project to produce refractive optics using ABS plastic on an FDM printer. This was an experiment done by FennecLabs to reduce the internal imperfections, namely bubbles, that limit optical transmission thus allowing refractive optics to be achieved. The nature of this experiment was qualitative and does not explore the possibility of producing deterministic optics. Therefore, going into the Spring of 2023, I hope to attempt to match the results of FennecLabs and push the research forward to hopefully achieve several tenets of industrial optical elements such as: Deterministic Surface Shape, Characterization of Internal/Material Quality, Increased Transmission, etc. A plan surrounding the efforts to be done is to be added soon.