look what I made :)

[ImanCarrot]

Here's some pics of lenses that I made and the system it goes in to. It's a passive night vision system and they kindly sent me one to play with hehe. It's amazing what you can see in the dark!

PS note the proper engineer's watch strap I'm wearing- gonna patent that hehe.

[CNC Pro]

When can we expect to see the plans here?

[Geof]

.....It's a passive night vision system.......

Truly passive? As in no batteries or outside power sources? Is it commercially available?

[ImanCarrot]

Soz, I meant Passive in that it requires no Active light source- it's your standard photomultiplier type system (ie light intensifier, not infrared) except that you can see through it in the visible spectrum too- everythings green. There's improved circutry to stop the tube being burned out too, I've used it in pitch blackness and broad daylight! It's powered by (beleive it or not) one AA battery.

As far as I know it's not commercially availabe- it's for some rather nice folk in a very sandy place who are killing baddies hence I made sure the lenses were perfect.

[keithorr]

I like the engineers message board too! Very neat and organized.

[leberen]

wow, those look like aspheric made of b270 or some type of pyrex? Very nice!

[ImanCarrot]

Well spotted! one surface is an aspheric, the other a hybrid aspheric. The material is MR7 plastic which has a high (for plastic) refractive index of 1.66). I Diamond Turned them

[bkukowski]

Now i'm starting to see how my physics classes may come in handy someday I can't imagine what it took to make that... Amazing! I'd love more details as well.

[CNCRob]

Thats very cool.

[diarmaid]

Very nice machining. Is that nve third generation?

[mb0978]

Very sweet.

That brings back memories of making toric contact lenses. We used a variety of lathes including Hardinge, Levin, Chase, Robertson, and a CNC job called a DAC lathe to cut the spherical surfaces using diamond lathe tools. We would cut a spherical base curve into a hydrophilic blank, crimp the blank in a little Delrin jig, then grind another surface using a diamond coated brass arbor. When the crimp was released, we would have a nice football shaped aspheric surface. I believe we went up to about 6-7 diopters of cylinder once hydrated.

The blank was then mounted on another arbor for machining in an offset collet. The offset would produce a weighted lens that would orient the cylinder on the eye properly. It would then be put into a sphrical collet to cut a little edge lenticulation to reduce the edge thickness for comfort.

Mike

[leberen]

Are you familiar with DIFFSYS for machining optical surfaces on diamond turning/flycutting machines?

You have a great niche, I was surprised to hear it was MR7.