Tolerance optimization of a mobile phone camera lens system

In the manufacturing process for the lens system of a mobile phone camera, various types of assembly and manufacturing tolerances, such as tilt and decenter, should be appropriately allocated. Because these tolerances affect manufacturing cost and the expected optical performance, it is necessary to choose a systematic design methodology for determining optimal tolerances. In order to determine the tolerances that minimize production cost while satisfying the reliability constraints on important optical performance indices, we propose a tolerance design procedure for a lens system. A tolerance analysis is carried out using Latin hypercube sampling for evaluating the expected optical performance. The tolerance optimization is carried out using a function-based sequential approximate optimization technique that can reduce the computational burden and smooth numerical noise occurring in the optimization process. Using the proposed design approach, the optimal production cost was decreased by 28.3% compared to the initial cost while satisfying all the constraints on the expected optical performance. We believe that the tolerance analysis and design procedure presented in this study can be applied to the tolerance optimization of other systems. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America