A Study on Electrorheological Finishing of Small Optical Components

Description

Small aspheric and complex optical mirrors/lenses are facing an increasing demand in the fields of optoelectronics, communication, project and display systems, life science and automotive applications, and so on. Some stringent applications call for the surface roughness of those surfaces to be as low as a few nanometres. Conventional polishing methods are not suitable due to problems in tool miniaturization and tool wear.This research aims to develop a novel polishing process for polishing small complex optical surfaces based on electrorheological finishing. A tool/spindle system will be designed, fabricated, and evaluated. Process modelling and strategies for using the developed process for polishing will also be addressed.