Optics Injection Molding
Elimold provides precision injection molding solutions for optical products, including lenses, lamp housings, light guide plates, etc., ensuring that the products meet the highest standards of accuracy and cleanliness.
In-house Precision Optical Molding
Elimold is a plastic molding company that helps every customer make optical components. Our team of engineers will work closely with you to understand the application, evaluate tolerances, establish necessary quality metrics, and create molds that deliver molded optics in a consistent manner.
We combine decades of experience and advanced equipment to mold precision plastic optics in-house. Elimold serves customers around the world by providing unparalleled expertise in optical injection molding. So when your design defies traditional molding design rules, our team of engineers can provide you with a solution. Sure, we use basic principles like Taguchi Design of Experiments (DOE), window treatments, and decoupled (scientific) molding, but we have a secret recipe that has been used for over 30 years to ensure that your molded optics are fully functional works of art.
Precision injection molded plastic optics require special knowledge and capabilities. Because tolerances are tight and mold processing conditions are often extreme, injection mold design and manufacturing techniques require special knowledge and skills. Injection molding equipment should have advanced control capabilities and care must be taken to ensure cleanliness.
In-house Optical Injection Molding Workshop
Our cleanroom is equipped with dozens of advanced injection molding machines ranging from 85 tons to 450 tons for optical injection molding. The most transparent materials we use are PC and PMMA, which can produce parts with diameters from 2.5mm to 350mm and weights from 0.05 grams to 0.5KG. Our products include LED lighting, imaging optics, wide-angle lenses; magnifying glasses; Oculus Rift, 3D glasses, aspherical and spherical optical lenses; light guides, automotive head-up displays; In the mass production of precision plastic optical components, Elimold provides high-precision plastic optical components with weights ranging from a few tenths of a gram to thick-walled parts, all of which are realized by injection molding.
In addition, we also provide injection compression molding services, which is a modification of the injection molding process for the production of thin-walled large-area plastic optical components, microstructures and low-stress plastic parts.
Moreover, our production workshop is fully air-conditioned and has clean room conditions. Downstream optical coating processes must meet these high quality requirements. Our mass production machines have clamping forces from 50 kN to 200 kN.
Robots, conveyors, tool storage and palletizing systems enable automated and cost-effective mass production of plastic optics. Flexible production planning allows us to produce up to several million components per year as well as small batches of a few thousand plastic optics.
Optical Components Injection Molding Solutions
Each development project requiring custom optical plastic part services is managed by a project engineer who monitors and controls deliverables and provides regular status updates.
Elimold’s projects include custom optical plastic part services supported by MoldFlow analysis, viscosity profiles, cavity balance studies, pressure window characterization, gate seal time studies, and cooling time studies. Elimold’s team of engineers is well versed in insert configuration and designs single-cavity R&D molds with steel insert areas. Interchangeable plates, inserts, and sub-inserts enable faster design iterations at a lower cost than creating a new mold for each functional change. SPI Class 103 and 104 molds are made of P20 steel and aluminum with hot and cold runners.
Production tooling for custom optical plastic part projects includes high-cavity SPI Class 101 and 102 molds made of hardened steel. Cold, runner, hot gate, and hot runner molds are designed with up to 128 cavities.
Optimized Optical Manufacturing
Our vertically integrated production facilities accelerate your time to market for new or existing products, with lens design, DFM, mold design, in-house tooling, injection molding, and QA all under one roof. From lens prototyping to volume production, Elimold can streamline production lines with automation when necessary to achieve the optimization you need. Elimold’s global supply chain enables us to meet your production needs at your manufacturing site or close to your customers. Our optical components will deliver the same performance no matter where your optics are manufactured in our global supply chain.
Explore Elimold's injection molding solutions for a wide range of optical components
We would be happy to provide a free evaluation and quote to help you produce your optical parts. Let us show you how we can start saving your company time and money.
Integration of lens molding and optical molding
In the field of optics, the convergence of optical molding and lens molding is reshaping the industry. Optical molding facilitates large-scale, cost-effective production of durable non-glass lenses, overcoming historical issues of fragility and cost. This collaboration enables the manufacture of high-quality lenses with perfect optical surfaces, positioning plastic optical lenses as a resilient alternative in a variety of applications.
The integration of optics and lens molding prioritizes efficiency and innovation in the field of optics. Plastic optical lenses made with precision molding processes become durable alternatives that meet the needs of modern applications. This collaborative approach not only ensures large-scale production, but also marks a strategic shift towards a future of advanced and accessible optical solutions. The journey of combining optical molding with lens molding heralds a transformative future where optics will seamlessly combine durability, precision and cost-effectiveness.
Superior Part Performance
As a bulk supplier of optical plastic parts, Elimold provides customers with a steady supply of high-precision optical lens parts for a variety of light transmission and control applications with precise, flexible optical performance. With proprietary optical design, tool design, and scientific injection molding processes, mass production of complex optical lens part designs is possible.
Not ready for mass production yet? Our flexible lens production meets customer needs, from small batch prototypes to fast ramp-up and stable mass production.
Produce your optical lenses at scale where you need them and ensure on-time product delivery: our global production network provides flexibility to optimize your supply chain.
Injection Molded Nano-Scale Lenses for Reliable Optical Performance
Elimold injection molds precision optical products such as lenses for optical communications. With our specialized injection molding processes and in-house produced ultra-precision molds, complex lens features such as tiny dimensions (e.g., lens pitch is sub-micron), high transparency, and mirror surfaces can be injection molded. Enplas’ high-quality lens molding not only enables precise lens dimensions for lens optical performance, but also provides easier alignment when assembling the molded lenses into devices such as optical transceivers. This is because the quality of injection molding affects point quality and other important factors.
Making lenses in large quantities with stable optical performance
Elimold customers get precision plastic lenses that consistently deliver the optical performance they need, no matter how large the production volume. We supply LED backlight lenses to high-end TV manufacturers to meet the needs of the huge global consumer market. This is a testament to the quality of our high-volume products. While some manufacturers may only meet the dimensional specifications of the lenses produced, Elimold ensures the optical performance you need. Our engineers work closely with customers to meet their specific optical performance needs by solving lens design, production and assembly procedures. We are by your side throughout the process.
Injection Molded Freeform Lenses
Enplas can injection mold the next generation of optical components, such as freeform and aspheric lenses. With our proprietary optical design, tool design and scientific injection molding process, large-scale production of complex lens designs is possible. If you are looking for a manufacturing partner who can design, prototype, test and ultimately achieve large-scale production of new optical components used in AR/VR or sensing applications, please contact us for more details.
Optical Component Materials
Our experienced team of designers, technicians and engineers use their in-depth knowledge to produce a range of plastic optical components with different application consistency. We use high-quality materials to ensure that the manufactured parts are of the highest quality. We can design parts composed of various materials, such as:
- Teflon
- Kynar
- ABS
- Styrene
- Delrin
- Acrylic
- HDPE
- Acetal
- Polypropylene
Optical coatings
Optical coatings are used to reflect, direct and filter light, prevent reflections, protect surfaces and improve the quality of optical components. Elimold is your expert partner for the design, manufacture and coating of polymer-based optical components and systems. Plastics have become the material of choice for optical components. LED reflectors, medical technology components and many other components can be produced in large quantities at low cost. Optical coatings improve the physical properties and functionality of plastic lenses. Not only can the optical properties be controlled (e.g. anti-reflection or reflection), but also the mechanical and chemical properties can be influenced. With optical coatings, plastic optical components are resistant to gases and moisture. For the coating of optical components, we use physical vapor deposition (PVD). Modern software tools and coating systems from Elimold calculate and optimize optical properties and characteristics.
The following optical functions can be achieved by optical coating
- Antireflection (AR) for anti-reflection
- reflex increase (HR) for reflections and filters
- Hard coating to increase the scratch resistance, for example glassy hardness of coating with SiO2
- Topcoat for chemical function alization
Our experts will provide you with a wide range of services
- Optimization of your construction element design for more cost-efficient serial coating
- Selection of suitable materials and processes
- Feasibility studies
- Development of optimized coatings and coat designs according to customer requirements
- Process optimization ranging from cleaning and coating right through to packaging
- Development of suitable measurement and testing procedures according to ISO, DIN, or MIL
Application
Custom precision molded polymer optical components are our specialty, and the following are related optical plastic parts we frequently produce.
- Aspheric lenses
- Integrated lens systems & modules
- Diffractive optics & Fresnel lenses
- Off-axis parabolas
- Cylindrical lenses
- Total Internal Reflection (TIR) lenses
- Reflective optics, mirrors & corner cubes
- Lens arrays & Fly’s eyes
- Freeform optics
- Combiners
- Collimating lenses
Ready to get a quote for your optical injection molded parts?
We have years of experience in optical injection molding, and our team of experts can deliver high-quality results quickly and efficiently. Contact us now for a quote.