Custom Cylindrical Lenses

Cylindrical lenses are often used to focus incoming light onto a line, or to change the aspect ratio of an image. The cylindrical shape of cylindrical lens surfaces enables one-dimensional light shaping along a line. Typically plano-concave or plano-convex, cylindrical lenses are made to expand and focus light, respectively. They are perfect for creating laser lines or for anamorphic beam shaping to produce rounded laser output.

Alfa Chemistry can provide cylindrical lenses specially made for each customer and their needs. Our skilled professionals test each product in our state-of-the-art metrology laboratory to ensure it meets standards. For more information on your needs for custom cylindrical lenses, please contact our technical sales team.

Our Capabilities

Alfa Chemistry provides plano-convex, plano-concave, or aspheric cylindrical lenses in a variety of shapes and grades. Additional custom specialty lenses, such as biconvex or biconcave cylindrical lenses, parabolic mirrors, cylindrical ellipsoidal mirrors, and hyperbolic cylindrical lenses, are also available upon request. To fulfill special demands, we can also produce sector lenses, inclined cylindrical lenses, and off-axis cylindrical lenses.

All levels of quality, from commercial grade to precision grade, are available upon request. We provide cylindrical lenses in high-quality grades. Options for substrate materials include, but are not limited to, UV fused silica, Schott or Ohara glass, and BK7 glass. To fulfill special demands, we can also produce sector lenses, inclined cylindrical lenses, and off-axis cylindrical lenses.

Below are examples of our standard manufacturing capabilities.

Cylindrical Lenses Types:

• Plano-Convex Cylindrical Lenses - They converge light on one axis and can be used to magnify images in one direction and change the aspect ratio. Applications for these lenses include line detector arrays, illumination slits, and laser projection.
• Plain Concave Cylindrical Lenses - They are similar to flat concave lenses, but act on only one axis. They are able to spread collimated input light from a single line while extending light along a single axis. For the creation of laser lines, one-dimensional picture compression, or distorted beam shaping, negative cylindrical lenses can be utilized.
• Aspherical Cylindrical Lenses - They have the same one-dimensional focus as traditional cylindrical lenses and are made to lessen aberrations. Similar uses to other cylindrical lenses include collimating a laser diode's output, deforming beam shaping, and focusing an evanescent beam on a detector array.

Fig 1. Setup of cylindrical lens system used to shape the laser spot, which measured 1 mm vertically and 0.2 mm horizontally. (Bolouki N, et al. 2015)

Why Choose Cylindrical Lenses?

Detector illumination, barcode scanning, spectroscopy, holographic illumination, optical information processing, and computer technology are among the common uses for cylindrical lenses. You might need to acquire custom cylindrical lenses because the applications for these lenses are frequently highly particular in order to achieve the desired results.

Cylindrical lenses features include:

• Adjusting the height of the image
• Compressing images to one dimension
• Correcting astigmatism in imaging systems
• Creating circular rather than elliptical laser beams

Quality Assurance

Our highly skilled professionals test every product in our cutting-edge metrology lab to make sure it complies with standards. Then, before shipping, custom products are passed to our QA staff for cleaning and surface fault assessment.

Alfa Chemistry is always looking to expand and work with customers to achieve their specifications, so please feel free to contact our technical sales team for more information and guidance on your enquiry.

Reference

1. Bolouki N, et al. (2015). "Development of Thomson Scattering Diagnostics for Cathode-Directed Streamer Discharges in Helium." Kyushu University Graduate School of Science and Engineering. 36(2): 1-5.