3D printing a lens is possible with our companies recently developed "printoptical technology" With this technology polishing is no longer necessary.

LUXeXceL has developed a revolutionary 3D printing technology for making perfectly smooth surfaces. The company is fully focused on enabling design, rapid prototyping optics, and manufacturing of optics, lenses and optical surfaces so there is no longer a difference in making 1, 10, 100 or 1000 pieces. This Technology is called Printoptical Technology, a patented one-step-CAD-to-optic manufacturing process. Unique is that there is no need for post-processing (grinding, polishing / coloring etc.). Recently LUXeXceL came in the picture globally as a proof of concept has been printed: A functional pair of glasses (frame + lenses in one print job). Momentarily the company is focused on supporting the LED lighting industry with the possibility to offer customized optics and even great free-form designs.

I invite you to visit our website for more information

I, too, am very interested in this topic.  I am a lay person so I don't profess to have technical savvy; just a commercial interest.

Thanx

I am also very interested in this topic.

gdebel, it would be great if you keep us up to date on how you get on. I agree with previous poster - polycarbonate would be a very suitable material for your test.

Thanks

Luxexcel.com  (check them out)

Which from what I understand is a pretty big deal (the lens part)... I happen to have a pretty big vested interest in seeing this technology take off in the future...

I own the domain names: LensPrinters.com and LensPrinting.com... plus a few others.

Anything else you can tell me about your own experiences would be great to hear.... how did your lens turn out?

Also... It was my understanding that a majority of lenses produced worldwide were comprised of polycarbonate "plastics" ... is this accurate?

Thanks in advance!

My problem is in fact: is a very basic lens printable today, without acetone smoothing or other complicated manipulations (sand softening would be acceptable)? There is two main problems: definition, and transparency.

By the way, did you heard about 3d-printing with acrylic? I could'nt find any website where I could order acrylic printing, but acrylic would be a good material for the king of lenses I try to make...

I had wondered whether a 100 micron print (10^-4 metres) could be acetone smoothed to get closer to an optical surface. I did once do a project about whether parabolic shapes could get close enough to the curves needed for things that could tolerate lower accuracy (like solar collectors)

To me, the commercial products still look very frosted, but I wonder about printing something that could hold the negative shape of an optical surface, like printing a telescope mirror, smoothing it, and then silvering it.

I have sent you a private message with additional information. Please check your PMs.

I took a few minutes and modeled your lens for you:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:93321

I saved it as a .STEP file and a high-polygon .STL, as well as the native .SLDPRT. Feel free to use these models to send to potential 3D printing vendors during your search.

One thing I think you'll find is that because both surfaces of the lens are high-radius curves, FDM is a difficult print format for this part, since it doesn't handle such extreme overhangs without support. You could use support, but it will mar the surface of your print (i.e. the lens face). There are always post-processing techniques to smooth/polish this surface, though, so don't let that discourage you.

Depending on how flexible you are, I know that Professor Ganter at the Solheim Additive Manufacturing Laboratory at the University of Washington has been using a 3D printing technique to create glass parts. It's research based, but this seems like an excellent candidate for that.

Please let me know if you have any further questions!