MOLDING OF OPTICAL ELEMENT

PURPOSE:To mass produce high-precision molded articles of optical elements efficiently, by making the molding face of one mold into a dent or protruded spherical surface, providing the molding face of the other mold with several high-precision faces and making relative distance of the molds reach a given distance while letting each optical axis of the high-precision face coincide with the center of curvature of the spherical surface. CONSTITUTION:Disc print glass 10 having larger volume than product volume is heated into given viscosity and positioned between an upper mold 1 and a lower mold 2 having formed a high-precision dent spherical surface 3 heated to 'glass transition point -5' deg.C. Then glass 10 is pressed in the thickness direction by the upper mold 1 and the lower mold 2 and the glass 10 is stuck fast to the dent spherical surface 3 and nonspherical surfaces 6. In the operation, a glass film is laid between the dent spherical surface 3 and protruded spherical surface 4 and 5 and relative distance of both the spherical surfaces reaches 0.01mm distance while letting each optical axis X of the nonspherical surfaces 6 substantially coincide with the center of curvature of the dent spherical surface 3. Consequently, molded articles capable of satisfying high-precision characteristics required in optical elements such as optical lens, etc., can be efficiently molded.