Polymer optics is a growing market both for medium quality optics and precision optics. Steel moulds for polymer optics are normally produced in several process steps; the last step before moulding is manual polishing. This step requires skilled experts and is very time-consuming. The focus of this paper is on robot polishing of steel moulds for polymer injection moulding of optics. The goal of this work is to replace manual polishing and other process steps with robot polishing. Therefore a new process has been developed to minimize the number of required process steps.

Steel moulds for polymer optics demand high standards of roughness and shape accuracy. To reach the required specifications concerning roughness and shape accuracy different measurement and characterization methods are necessary. A combination of parameters determined with different measurement instruments is needed to validate the polishing results.

This project was started by Aalen University and UVEX Safety Group together with the Experimental Ophthalmology Group Homburg/Saar. The goal for this new process is to produce a ready to use steel mould with a shape accuracy better than 4µm and a micro roughness of less than 5nm rms; with just one process step after grinding.