Barrington, NJ-Edmund Optics (EO), the premier provider of optical components, has improved its manufacturing capability to serve the growing market for aspheric lenses. The company has recently purchased equipment to increase both production capacity as well as precision metrology, placing it among the top asphere manufacturers worldwide.

As a result of increasing customer demand for both stock and custom aspheric lenses, Edmund Optics has been making significant investments in production equipment. In late 2009, EO purchased an Asphereic Stitching Interferometer (ASI) to provide advanced metrology for customers ranging from the biotech to the defense industries. “The ASI machine is one of only three in the world,” said Walt Czajkowski, VP global manufacturing at EO. “Its acquisition represents a unique opportunity for EO to provide higher precision and faster correction metrology for machined aspheres.”

More recently EO announced the purchase and receipt of several new machines for its Pennsburg manufacturing division, which will allow EO to increase its current capacity by more than 40%. One of the machines, a Satisloh SPM 60 Generator, EO acquired at the June 2010 Optatec show in Germany. “We got a great deal at the show and already have this machine up and running,” said Czajkowski. “This allows EO to offer even better pricing to our volume customers and ultimately, as we leverage internal process efficiencies, our catalog customers.” Robert Edmund, CEO, added, “Six years into the asphere manufacturing game, we are in a great position and remain well aligned with key equipment vendors such as QED Technologies, Statisloh, Schneider, Moore Nanotechnology Systems, Taylor Hobson and Toshiba Machine.”

EO will be highlighting its advanced asphere production capabilities at several conferences over the next few months. The company’s experienced staff of asphere designers and manufacturing experts will be making presentations at shows such as the Speckle tradeshow in Brazil in September and Photonics West 2011. Information on the company’s asphere products can be found at the company website,www.edmundoptics.com/aspheres.