Aspheres and freeforms

Historically, the disadvantages of poor manufacturability and metrology determined the choice of using classical optics for optomechanical instrumentation. Worldwide however, a lot of time and effort is invested in manufacturing aspheres and freeforms, e.g. in advanced manufacturing and metrology machines and also in the improvement of optical design packages. This paper describes the state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies that TNO Science and Industry is using to manufacture these complex optics.