Plano-convex, plano-concave, rod, and custom cylindrical lenses that shape light in one axis for laser, imaging, projection, and detector systems.
IRD manufactures to your print. Send the drawing with the radius, clear aperture, material, coating target, and how the cylinder is centred and mounted, and the technical team reviews it for manufacturability before quoting. For a new design that review is free of charge.
Choose the cylinder form around what the beam or image must do, then specify the radius, clear aperture, material, and coating.
The geometries IRD manufactures most often, and what each one does to a beam or an image in a single axis.
Focuses or expands light along one axis for line detectors, laser projection, line focusing, and anamorphic beam shaping.
Regularly manufactured from micro-optic size to 6″ diameter
Expands light in one dimension for image compression, line generation, and anamorphic correction.
Compact cylindrical optics for constrained assemblies where repeatable one-axis control has to fit a small envelope.
Diameters from .070″ to .650″ and above
Convex, concave, and compound profiles developed around the print, alignment scheme, and inspection method.
A cylinder has one powered axis and one flat one, and nothing about a spherical fixture or a plano interferogram tells you whether either is right. These are the controls IRD holds across a production run.
IRD uses custom centering equipment built to locate the centre of curvature on a cylindrical surface. Decentration on a cylinder shows up as a tilted line focus rather than a blurred point, so it has to be measured on the powered axis directly.
Custom ripple-checking equipment verifies the form and flatness of the curve in process. Catching a form error while the part is still on the polishing route is what keeps a batch from finishing out of tolerance together.
IRD runs computer-generated holographic cylinder nulls alongside its Wyko, Zygo, and Nikon interferometers, so cylindrical surfaces can be measured interferometrically instead of inferred from contact gauging.
Four CGH cylinder nulls in the published equipment listCylindrical polishing systems and rod polishers are separate machines from the flat lapping and polishing lines, so cylinder work is not run on tooling designed for plano substrates.
Six cylindrical polishing systems and eleven rod polishers on the floorCylinder performance is controlled by radius, form, centering, surface quality, and the relationship between the curved and plano faces.
| Attribute | Typical | Best case | Application note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radius | Application-defined | <2 mm to >125 mm | Convex and concave cylinder geometries |
| Plano-convex dimension | Print-defined | ±.0002″ | Micro-optics through 6″ diameter |
| Rod-lens dimension | Print-defined | ±.001″ | .070″ to .650″ diameter and above |
| Surface roughness | Ra < 1 µin | Ra < 5 Å | High-energy and scatter-sensitive applications |
| Dimensional tolerance | ±.005″ | ±.0001″ | Finished geometry and mounting interfaces |
These are IRD's published process capability figures across materials and geometries, not a guarantee for a given print. Material, radius, length, clear aperture, and inspection method all move them, and every surface is quoted individually. The published flatness and parallelism values do not state a reference wavelength or measurement condition — send yours and the team will confirm against it.
A dedicated cell carries the cylinder from blank through centering, grinding, polishing, coating, and interferometric checks. That keeps the powered axis, the plano face, and the mounting datum tied to the same print revision instead of to three separate setups.
The IRD AdvantageUse these lists to frame the first review. The drawing, environment, performance requirement, inspection method, and volume determine the final route.
A web page is hard to attach to a review packet. These are IRD's own published technical documents on the questions this page raises.
IRD on the single-side pitch process behind its tightest surface quality: how pitch plates and grooving carry the slurry, why the method controls edge roll better than lapping, and the component sizes it covers.
ArticleMaterial guideHow wavelength range, operating environment, manufacturing path, and inspection expectations decide between the two substrates most cylindrical lenses are quoted in.
ArticleWebinarIRD's applications team on the information that makes a quote accurate the first time, and the omissions that cause a requote.
RecordingThe finished component often crosses product categories. These pages cover the nearest materials, processes, and program contexts.
Send the drawing with the radius and its tolerance, the clear aperture, the powered-axis orientation relative to the mounting datum, material, coating target, annual volume, and the inspection method you will accept the part against. For a new design, the technical team runs a no-cost Design for Manufacturability review before quoting, then estimates prototype and production volumes separately.
Or call 320.693.7217. If you are qualifying a second source for a cylinder already in production, say so — IRD asks for that work directly.