Ball Lenses

Ball LensesFeatures:High Precision Dimension Control,Optional Substrate Material.Applications:Optical Measurement Systems, Projietion Optics Systems, Imaging Optics Systems, Astronomical Optics.Description:Ball Lenses are commonly used to improve signal quality in fiber coupling applications, or for use in endoscopy or bar code scanning applications. Ball Lenses feature short back focal lengths to minimize the distance needed from the Ball Lens to the optical fiber. Edmund Optics offers a variety of Ball Lenses in a range of substrates for performance in the ultraviolet to the NIR. Half-Ball Lenses are also available to ease mounting or system integration.Ball lenses are highly polished spheres made of optically transparent homogeneous materials. Carefully controlled manufacturing process produces spheres with precise diameters and unsurpassed surface quality. Numerical aperture of ball lenses is proportional to their refractive index. These lenses are used in visible and near infrared spectrum. The ball lenses could be equatorially ground relative to direction of optical axis to facilitate packaging and orient AR coating. The round cross-section of these lenses results in the large field of view and simple, cost-effective alignment where most of the positioning errors result in simple focusing errors. These lenses can be used as fiber-optics collimators. In order to accommodate different fiber-arrays pitch, the edge of the lens may be ground to a desired width.Spherical ball lenses are widely used in optical measurement systems, projection & imaging optical systems. Also for laser collimating and focusing, laser-to-fiber coupling, fiber-to-fiber coupling, and fiber-to-detector coupling.Ball lenses are useful for improving signal coupling between fibers, emitters and detectors. It has very low spherical aberration and so focus and collimate light very accurately. Ball lenses are available economically at very high precision and are simple to mount.Specifications:Material: N-BK7 grade A optical glassDimension Tolerance: +0.0, -0.03mmSurface quality: 60/40Clear Aperture: >85%Surface Figure: λ/2 @633nmCentration: 3 arc minutesNote: Diameter: available from Φ1.0mm to Φ25mm All surfaces polished