Today's optical designers face new corporate cultures whose priorities include product performance as only one criteria for success. Designers must also address cost constraints, new and unfamiliar skill requirements, overhead containment, maintenance of profit margins, and staff reductions. Old skills must be applied in new ways. New diamond-turning machine technology has made it possible to construct injection molding tools which combine refraction and diffraction into a single lens element. New polymer materials render the designs to be technically and commercially feasible. The significance of combining refraction and diffraction in a single lens element should not be underestimated, as it will expand the capability of polymer optics beyond its refractive limitations. Use of this technology can restructure domestic optical manufacturing.

Date Published: 18 August 1995
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 2622, Optical Engineering Midwest '95, (18 August 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.216807

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2622:
Optical Engineering Midwest '95
Rudolph P. Guzik, Editor(s)