An investigation of fast tool servo machining of optical microstructures

Abstract

微结构光学元件是一种微小的拓扑元件,通常分为微沟槽列阵、锥形列阵以及微透镜列阵等,这些微结构光学元件能在一些手持装置(例如手机)的平板显示器上得到先进的光学应用.由于产品微型化的需求越来越紧迫,传统的刻蚀方法不再适用于加工高质量的光学微结构产品,为此,提出了一种新型的加工高质量光学微结构元件的技术,该技术以快速伺服刀架加工系统为基础,并结合新开发的刀具轨迹生成器,该刀具路径生成器主要是针对快速伺服刀架加工系统而开发的,它可以根据光学微结构元件的设计直接生成加工所需的刀具轨迹,而不需要进行任何的后续处理,最后,通过加工实例证明了上述加工系统的可行性并得到了符合要求的加工效果。 Optical microstructures are small-scale topologies generally classified as grooves, pyramids, and micro-lens arrays which are finding applications in flat-panel displays used in hand-held devices such as mobile phones. As more stringent requirements are being imposed on the miniaturization of telecommunication products, the conventional etching process is found to be inadequate to fabricate high quality optical microstructures. This paper presents an effective technology for the fabrication of high quality optical microstructures based on fast tool servo ( FTS) machining system incorporated with a purposely built tool path generator (TPG) . The TPG allows the generation of a tool path directly from the design of the optical microstructures without the need for any data post-processing. The capability of the FTS machining system is demonstrated through a case study and satisfactory results were obtained. 还原