Characterization of additive manufacturing (AM) materials for micro-lens array construction

Increasingly popular Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques have been shown to improve traditional manufacturing practices by reducing overhead costs without sacrificing instrument size or design complexity. AM has seen success in some areas of astronomical instrumentation research, including the production of micro-lens arrays from high purity fused silica glass. This poster characterizes three thermoplastics commonly used in AM for the construction of a 5x5 micro-lens array.