In recent years, additive manufacturing methods became more and more prominent. Thereby, these techniques are mainly used in order to realize mechanical components. But the additive manufacturing technology offers a high potential in the field of optics as well. Owing to new design possibilities, completely new solutions are possible. We report on the realization of complex freeform optics using standard 3D printers. We briefly point out the characteristics of 3D printing and its influence on the optical properties. Additionally we address the needed rework of 3D printed optical components. Therefore we apply two different methods - a robot-based fluid jet polishing and a coating method. The advantage of a 3D printed optic lies in its shape complexity. Thus different complex shaped optical elements are discussed. They are used for either metrology tasks or illumination tasks.
3D printed freeform optical sensors are a different and new approach for optical metrology. Thereby the optical design is adapted to the fabrication characteristics of additive manufacturing. All needed optical elements like mirrors and lenses are reduced to one simple printed sample, which is capable to illuminate a complex shaped industrial part for shaped measurement based on light section technique. Additionally the laser line can be formed on the part in a way, so that no shadow appears–even in the case of kinks etc.. Due to the physical limitations of the printing process and different printing techniques each optical design would present some drawbacks that has to be considered prior a printing process in order to obtain the best results possible.
In general in industrial manufacturing a larger lot size gives the potential to decrease the production costs. There is however also a big demand on individualization in order to cover all customer requirements. These individual requests of a customer lead to a production complexity and cannot always be covered within the current manufacturing processes sufficiently. In metrology we can see an equivalent situation. A metrology tool should be suitable for a large variety of parts. E.g. in shape metrology, the tool should be able to measure any kind of shapes (spheres, tips, steps, etc.). As a standard measurement tool is not adjusted to an individual measurement task, the best performance is not reached equal wise for all shapes.
In this paper we want to present a new approach for shape metrology of parts, fabricated in small lots: the individualized optical metrology based on additive manufacturing. Thereby the main idea is that the sampling signal of an optical metrology tool is individually adapted to the shape of the object to be inspected. This can be reached by an individual design of the optics, leading to a complex shape of the optical components. In order to manufacture these complex shaped optical parts, additive manufacturing (3D printing) is used.
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