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Buying Free Form Optics

Top-level product category: icon optical components and devices

Related product category: aspheric optics

Free form optics refers to optical components or devices that utilize optical surfaces which are not rotationally symmetric. These custom-designed optics are used in advanced imaging systems, illumination devices, and other applications where traditional symmetric optics cannot meet the required performance criteria.

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 resources of RP Photonics. Unfortunately, we do not have a specific article related to free form optics.

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 free form optics. 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 free form optics. 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 Free Form Optics

21 suppliers for free form optics are listed in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, out of which 3 present their product descriptions. Both manufacturers and distributors can be registered.

Suppliers with Advertising Package

presenting their product descriptions

Enhancing Beam Performance

PowerPhotonic Ltd.
5A St David's Drive
Dalgety Bay
Fife KY11 9PF
United Kingdom
Profile page  Website  
free form optics

LightForge™ is a low-cost rapid fabrication service giving optical designers the ability to create innovative new freeform surfaces, test new ideas and verify designs for production without incurring expensive upfront engineering charges and lengthy prototyping lead times. LightForge™ can be used to create a wide range of refractive optical elements, from beam transformers and microlens arrays, to unique components such as diode laser smile correctors and wavefront compensator phaseplates, to completely custom surface shapes.

Product-specific web page
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)!

free form optics

At Avantier, we produce custom freeform optics for cutting-edge applications in industry, defense, research, and medicine. We specialize in custom freeform optics design and manufacturing solutions for imaging, catering to single prototypes and bulk production alike.

A freeform optic is defined as one that has at least one surface with no translational or rotational symmetry about any axes that are normal to the mean plane. In practice, this means that freeform systems may be free from any constraints of symmetry.

Manufacturing processes:

  • Unique challenges due to non-rotational symmetry.
  • Utilizes state-of-the-art CNC optical grinding technology.
  • Begins with roughing out the surface using CNC technology and diamond turning.
  • Involves rough and fine grinding followed by sub-aperture polishing.
  • Rigorous metrology checks ensure compliance with standards.
  • Substrate options include metal, plastic, and various optical materials like germanium, calcium fluoride, etc.
Product-specific web page

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Other Suppliers

ALL-IN OPTICS
Germany
Profile page  Website  
asphericon
Germany
Profile page  Website  
B-Con Engineering Inc
Canada K2E 7V
Bena Optical Products Ltd.
China
Profile page  Website  
Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH
Germany
Profile page  Website  
Diverse Optics
United States
Docter Optics SE
Germany
Esco Optics
United States
Profile page  Website  
Fresnel Technologies
United States
INGENERIC GmbH
Germany
Profile page  Website  
Jenoptik Optical Systems GmbH
Germany
Lensel Optics Pvt Ltd
India
Profile page  Website  
LightPath Technologies, Inc.
United States
Optimax Systems, Inc
Canada
Präzisions Glas & Optik GmbH
Germany
Profile page  Website  
Reynard Corporation
United States
Profile page  Website  
Taylor Hobson
United Kingdom
Trionplas Technologies GmbH
Germany
Profile page  Website  
Vertex Optics
United States

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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