Buyer's Guide … the one with the Encyclopedia!

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Buying Ball Lenses

ball lenses

Top-level product category: icon optical components and devices

More general product categories: lenses

Ball lenses are lenses having the geometrical form of a ball (sphere), which may be rather small (microoptics). They are used as beam collimators for optical fibers, fiber-to-fiber coupling, and other applications requiring compact and precise optical components.

Making Good Purchase Decisions

As the most professional photonics purchasing portal, RP Photonics helps you to not only to find all relevant suppliers (not limited to our advertisers), but also to make good purchasing decisions.

NEW: Structured Decision Process

Purchasing involves a lot of responsibility. We recommend that you apply best practice by using the following structured process: Go through the following expandable sections, complete the form and finally come to a purchase decision. You can then print that to a PDF for documenting the process.

Our article on best practices for purchasing and another one explaining this tool give you valuable insights.

1. Understand the technical background

It is important to sufficiently understand the technology before buying.

Use the comprehensive learning resources of RP Photonics:

encyclopedia article ball lenses lenses

If you need personal help, contact RP Photonics to get technical consultancy.

2. Define your requirements

It is essential to fully understand and clearly define your requirements before you buy.

We recommend that you develop a list of clear specifications according to your specific needs, against which you can later check the suitability of found product offers:

To help you, we have already listed some aspects we recommend you consider when buying ball lenses. Of course, there may be other aspects that are relevant to your specific case.

This list is for your own preparation, and can later (possibly in modified form) be used for quotation requests to suppliers.

Otherwise, you will need to talk to your technical colleagues.

If you cannot sufficiently clarify your requirements, you may want to get technical consultancy from RP Photonics.

You find these buttons in the supplier list below or under "3. Find suitable suppliers".

3. Find suitable suppliers

We suggest three steps:

  • Below, you can find our list of suppliers for ball lenses. Use the checkboxes to mark possibly suitable suppliers.
  • The selected suppliers will appear below this list, along with your list of specifications. You can then indicate which specifications they meet according to your research. (You should finalize your specifications before doing this.)
  • Based on the results, you can finally choose a supplier that is hopefully a good enough fit.

Selected suppliers:

(none so far)

Decision

The most suitable supplier you found:

Comments, e.g. reasons for your choice, or things which still need to be checked:

Suppliers for Ball Lenses

31 suppliers for ball lenses are listed in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, out of which 5 present their product descriptions. Both manufacturers and distributors can be registered.

Suppliers with Advertising Package

presenting their product descriptions

Avantier
1100 US-22
North Plainfield, NJ 07060
United States
Profile page  Website  

See us at LASER World of Photonics 2025 in Munich, June 24–27 (booth B1.171B)!

ball lenses

A ball lens consists of a highly transparent spherical ball, usually made of solid glass (fused silica) or another optical material with index of refraction less than 2. Most ball lenses are made with small diameters – a few millimeters or even less than a millimeter. The optical physics can be understood by realizing these lenses are, equivalently, two plano-convex lenses separated by a parallel plane.

Product-specific web page

Bringing quality into focus

Knight Optical (USA) LLC
1130 Ten Rod Road
Suite D102
North Kingstown
Rhode Island 02852
United States
Profile page  Website  

See the company profile page for additional contact information.

See us at LASER World of Photonics 2025 in Munich, June 24–27 (booth A3.533)!

ball lenses

Knight Optical provides a wide range of ball and half ball lenses which are ideal for endoscopy and fibre communications. We have a variety of material options available including quartz, sapphire, cubic zirconia, ruby, BK7 and other optical glass, fused silica, borosilicate, and many more. Our stock catalogue consists of 0.4 mm to 10 mm diameter ball lenses, but custom dimensions are available up to 100 mm.

Product-specific web page
Hangzhou Shalom Electro-optics Technology Co., Ltd.
A635, Boke Mansion
No. 9 Xiyuan Road
Xihu District, Hangzhou 310030
China
Profile page  Website  

See us at LASER World of Photonics 2025 in Munich, June 24–27 (hall B1, booth 258)!

ball lenses

Hangzhou Shalom EO provides ball lenses and half ball lenses made of various substrate materials including sapphire, ruby, BK7, UV fused silica, high index glass, and germanium, ZnSe, ZnS with AR coating. Our ball lenses and half-ball lenses are ideal for applications such as fiber communications, endoscopes, and microscopes.

Available diameters are between 0.3 mm and 300 mm, with surface roughness (Ra) <0.007 µm and a wide AR coating wavelength range. Custom ball and half ball module options are also available on request.

Product-specific web page

Your Custom Optics Expert

Shanghai Optics Inc.
425 Main St Suite 2E
Metuchen, NJ 08840
United States
Profile page  Website  
ball lenses

Shanghai Optics offers custom-made ball lenses. Please contact us for manufacturing limit or custom specifications. We can offer balls lenses e.g. with a diameter tolerance of ±50 μm, scratch & dig 20/10, surface quality 40-20, and with <50 μm deviation from a sphere.

Product-specific web page

The Future Depends on Optics

Edmund Optics
101 East Gloucester Pike
Barrington, NJ 08007
United States
Profile page  Website  

See us at OPIE 25 in Pacifico Yokohama, Japan, April 23–25 (booth F-32), CLEO 2025 in Long Beach (CA), USA, May 4–9 (booth 317), Automate 25 in Detroit (MI), USA, May 12–15 (booth 4400), SPS Italia in Parma, Italy, May 13–15 (hall 5, booth 055), LASER World of Photonics 2025 in Munich, June 24–27 (booth B1.416) and CLEO 2025 in Long Beach (CA), USA, May 4–9 (booth 317)!

ball lenses

Ball lenses are commonly used to improve signal quality in fiber coupling applications, or for use in endoscopy or bar code scanning applications. Our ball lenses feature short back focal lengths to minimize the distance needed from the ball lens to the optical fiber. Edmund Optics offers a variety of ball lenses in a range of substrates for performance in the ultraviolet to the NIR. Half-ball lenses are also available to ease mounting or system integration.

Product-specific web page

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Other Suppliers

AOS Optics Co., Ltd
China
Profile page  Website  
Changchun Realpoo Photoelectric Co., Ltd.
China
Profile page  Website  
Chineselens Optics Co., Ltd
China
Comar Optics Ltd
United Kingdom
Profile page  Website  
Doric Lenses Inc.
Canada
GELINDE Optical Co., Ltd.
China
Profile page  Website  
He Rui Optics Co., Ltd.
China
Profile page  Website  
IDIL Fibres Optiques
France
Profile page  Website  
Impex High Tech
Germany
Profile page  Website  
Inlight Precision Optics Co. Ltd
China
Lano Photonics Co., Ltd.
China
Moulded Optics GmbH
Germany
Nanjing Shuncheng Optical Components Co., Ltd.
China
Nanyang Running Optical & Electronic
China
Profile page  Website  
Changchun Positive Optics Co., Ltd.
China
Ross Optical
United States
Sherlan Optics
China
Profile page  Website  
SJLLASER
China
Profile page  Website  
Fuzhou Solid Photon Inc
China
Sunday Optics
China
Tian Cheng Optic Co., Ltd.
China
Tower Optical Corporation
United States
Vision Optics
United Kingdom
Profile page  Website  
VY Optoelectronics Co., Ltd.
China
WLoptical Co., Ltd.
China
Yancheng Tiandi International (YTD)
China

If any displayed information is incorrect (e.g., a listed supplier does not offer such products) or legally problematic, please notify RP Photonics so that the problem can be solved.



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