Method of manufacturing glass optical element
AssigneesMatsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Sumita Optical Glass, Inc.
InventorsHideto Monji, Kiyoshi Kuribayashi, Makoto Umetani, Noriyuki Kawata
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The invention provides a method of manufacturing extremely precise glass optical element by thermally deforming optical glass on the optical surface of a thermal processing jig coated with chemically stable thin film, followed by the molding of optical glass preform having free surface on one side and transcribedsurface from the optical surface of the thermal processing jig by means of a press mold which thermally presses the optical glass preform.
Claims7
A method of manufacturing a glass optical lens comprising the steps of:
- placing glass in the form of a gob on a surface of a thermal processing mold in a non-oxidizing atmosphere, said surface being a mirror surface;
- heating the thermal processing mold in the non-oxidizing atmosphere so that said glass is thermally deformed into an optical glass preform which has a transcribed surface transcribed from said mirror surface at a portion contacting said mirror surface and a free surface formed by surface tension of the thermally deformed glass at a portion not contacting said mirror surface;
- replacing the optical glass preform from the thermal processing mold to a position between molding surfaces of a pair of heated upper and lower molds which are different from said thermal processing mold;
- and
- press-molding said optical glass preform with the pair of upper and lower molds to obtain said lens.
A method of manufacturing a glass optical lens comprising the steps of:
- receiving a glass gob on a first thermal processing mold to form the glass gob into a rough shape;
- transferring the rough-shaped glass gob onto a surface of a second thermal processing mold in a non-oxidizing atmosphere such that the position of the glass gob on the second thermal processing mold becomes vertically inverted relative to its position on the first thermal processing mold, said surface being a mirror surface;
- heating the second thermal processing mold in the non-oxidizing atmosphere so that the rough-shaped glass gob is thermally deformed into an optical glass preform which has a surface transcribed from said mirror surface at a portion contacting said mirror surface and a free surface formed by surface tension of the glass gob at a portion not contacting said mirror surface;
- replacing the optical glass preform from the thermal processing mold to a position between molding surfaces of a pair of heated upper and lower molds which are different from said first and second thermal processing molds;
- and
- press-molding the optical glass preform with the pair of upper and lower molds to obtain said lens.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.