Injected plastic components

Injected plastic components  have two main advantages:
• adaptability to mass production (low cost, high throughput)
• ability to manufacture the housing together with the optics

CSTM R&D Solutions has acquired accumulated experience in developing and implementing optical packaging projects using custom injected plastic parts. We undertake plastic optic projects from concept to mass production. Our strength is in giving a complete QC backing to the process until the required yield is obtained. Our involvement starts at the optical design and prototyping stages, and continues in perfecting the process itself, and in realizing the tools necessary in the processing stations. Such manufacturing tools may include active alignment jigs, bonding and clamping jigs and test jigs of various kinds.

Development Steps
Plastic optics development includes the following steps:
• Conceptual design
• Preliminary optical design
• Preliminary optomechanical design
• Performance analysis (stray light, tolerances, manufacturability)
• Critical design
• Machined prototype (often skipped)
• Production tools and injected prototypes
• Pilot rounds – tune process until a sufficient output yield is reached.
• Ramp up

 Realization Tolerances
In general injected plastic optics can reach the following accuracy levels, where at least half of the deviation is due to process repeatability problems:

• dR/R (relative radius deviation):  0.5%
• Surface profile deviation [um]: 0.6D²/R and no less than 1u/inch
where: R is the radius of curvature of the surface in mm
D is the outer diameter of the surface in mm
• Angle between element surfaces: 10u divided by the insert width
• Centering error (shift of surfaces in respect to each other): ~20u
• External dimensions: approximately 20u