Development of a Cost-Efficient Computer Controlled Optical Surfacing Process for Correcting Aspheric Lenses using Tool Influence Function based Dwelltime Optimization

A Computer Controlled Optical Surfacing (CCOS) system has been developed for correcting form errors on aspheric surfaces. Experiments were carried out to find the correlation between different polishing parameters and polishing metrics such as removal rate, uniformity etc. Based on established polishing parameters, polishing process is developed to correct surface errors on planar, spherical and aspheric surfaces. A convolution model between TIF and dwell times was developed to simulate and solve for correction polishing. Surface accuracies of peak-to-valley (PV) 141 nm and root-mean-squared (RMS) 22 nm has been achieved for planar surface. For aspheric surface, current accuracy of 662 nm PV and of 115 nm RMS is achieved with further development ongoing.