3D printing is a promising method for the generation of complex‐shaped optical components. However, the printing efficiency, form accuracy, and surface smoothness are still challenging, especially for the printing of optical components. In this study, by synergizing the volumetric projection stereolithography, meniscus equilibrium effect, and iterative learning scheme, a low‐cost volumetric 3D printing method is developed for the ultra‐fast and high‐precision fabrication of miniature lenses with sub‐nanometric roughness. By including the covered liquid film as a part of the printed lens in the iterative learning, a low form error at the micrometer scale is achieved for the printed lens without any prior knowledge of the 3D printing process. As a demonstration, a sphere lens at the millimeter scale is directly printed in 2 s, achieving a peak‐to‐valley profile error of less than 5 µm, a sub‐nanometric roughness of rms = 0.614 nm, and an imaging resolution of 203.2 lp mm−1. It suggests that besides fast prototyping, the developed 3D printing strategy is suitable for the massive production of precise lenses.
As to the composite cylinder with metal liner under the high temperature and high pressure, thermal mechanical coupling mechanism and response are studied. On the basis of equations for coupling thermal and mechanical impact load and the non-linear thermoelastic finite element equations, the 3-D analysis model of the composite cylinder is established by using the finite element method. The direct coupling analysis is conducted and the variation regularity of the dynamic stress field is obtained. The results show that the thermal mechanical impact loads can cause large transient stress, which influences the strength of the metal liner obviously.
Targeting the fast prototyping and massive production of complicated lenses, Zhiwei Zhu and co‐workers report a low‐cost volumetric 3D printing method for the ultra‐fast and high‐precision fabrication of miniature lenses with sub‐nanometric roughness (see article number 2200488). The complex‐shaped lenses are generated by the volumetric projection stereolithography and corrected by introducing an iterative learning scheme. Super‐smooth surfaces are guaranteed by the meniscus equilibrium effect.
The high hardness, brittleness, and thermal resistance of fused silica glasses extremely challenge the mass production of complex‐shaped fused silica optics. This paper reports a new process chain for rapidly replicating complex‐shaped fused silica optics from complex molds at ambient temperature. The process chain mainly consists of the ultraprecision diamond turning of the complex‐shaped molds, the rapid shape replication through the silica precursor photopolymerization, and the transparent complex‐shaped optics derivation from the debinding and sintering. The directional shrinkages and surface texture evolutions in the process are comprehensively characterized for the replicated fused silica optics. After the shrinkage compensation, transparent fused silica optics with the spherical, microlens array, and hierarchical freeform surfaces are precisely replicated, exhibiting micrometric form accuracy, nanometric surface roughness, and high imaging quality. The proposed process chain provides a revolutionary approach for the mass production of precise complex‐shaped fused silica optics with fundamentally improved production efficiency and complex shape formation capability.
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