Diamond Is Used in All These Optical Glass Tools

Optical glass has many uses, the most common of which are for making lenses, prisms, mirrors and viewing windows in experimental instruments. In the field of optical glass, a variety of processing tools are required, including grinding wheels for rough milling of flat and spherical surfaces, edge grinding wheels for edge grinding, polishing discs for finish machining and surface grinding. Ultra-fine discs and polishing discs are also required for more fine requirements. The common saw blade is necessary for all optical glass fabrication, and diamond is necessary for all optical glass fabrication tools.

1. Milling and grinding wheels: milling in optical glass is divided into plane milling and spherical milling, and both milling and grinding methods have special milling and grinding wheels. The diameter of plane milling and grinding wheels is generally greater than 100mm, while the diameter of spherical milling and grinding wheels is less than 100mm. 60~180# with the concentration of 50%~100% can be selected according to requirements. Besides diamond, bronze is also required as a binder.
2. Grinding wheel: As the name implies, grinding wheel is used to process the edges of optical parts. Compared with milling wheel, there are two kinds of binders for grinding wheel, one is nickel plated, the other is sintered bronze with the grain size of 230/270~M28/20.

3. Fine and super-fine grinding discs: Generally speaking, optical glass needs to be processed before use, and fine and super-fine grinding discs play an important role in this. Fine and super-fine grinding optical glass can fully demonstrate good optical performance. The binders used according to accuracy include bronze, iron, nickel or cobalt. The grain size of fine grinding disc is generally 325/400-10/5 with the concentration of 100%-35%, while the grain size of superfine grinding disc is generally in the range of 14/8-7/5 with the concentration of 50%-25%.
4. Polishing disc: In order to make the surface of glass smooth, optical glass will be polished to ensure the surface cleanliness and reduce the processing of surface deterioration layer. The surface abrasives are cerium oxide and diamond powder.