Finite element analysis of glass moulding

Abstract

The increasing demands for optical glass components, such as aspherical lenses, require flexible and economical production processes. In particular the high surface complexity in combination with high form accuracies will limit the usage of existing manufacturing technologies. High precision glass moulding technologies have great potential to fulfil the needs of an economical manufacturing process for complex shaped optical components. Due to the different material properties of glass and mould material the process chain is driven by empirical iteration cycles between mould making and moulding. Today two to three cycles are necessary to reach the final accuracies on the moulded parts. Numerical simulation can help to predict the final shape of the moulded part which leads to shortening or even elimination of the time and cost consuming iteration cycles. The paper presents first simulation results of precision glass moulding for the analysis of manufacturing effects during the precision moulding of glass lenses.