Magnetic field-assisted batch polishing method for the mass production of precision optical glass components

The demand for optical glass has been rapidly increasing in various industries, where an ultra-smooth surface and form accuracy are critical for the functional elements of the applications. To meet the high surface-quality requirements, a polishing process is usually adopted to finish the optical glass surface to ensure an ultra-smooth surface and eliminate sub-surface damage. However, current ultra-precision polishing processes normally polish workpieces individually, leading to a low production efficiency and high polishing costs. Current mass-finishing methods cannot be used for optical glasses. Therefore, magnetic-field-assisted batch polishing (MABP) was proposed in this study to overcome this research gap and provide an efficient and cost-effective method for industrial use. A series of polishing experiments were conducted on typical optical components under different polishing parameters to evaluate the polishing performance of MABP on optical glasses. The results demonstrated that MABP is an efficient method to simultaneously polish multiple lenses while achieving a surface roughness, indicated by the arithmetic mean height (Sa), of 0.7 nm and maintained a sub-micrometer surface form for all the workpieces. In addition, no apparent sub-surface damage was observed, indicating the significant potential for the high-quality rapid polishing of optical glasses. The proposed method is highly competitive compared to the current optical polishing methods, which has the potential to revolutionize the polishing process for small optics.