Data Integration Of Optical Freeform Surfaces And Software Development

Data Integration of Optical Freeform Surfaces and Software DevelopmentIn the area of imaging in the optical system design, more and more people pay attention to optical freeform components. As a result of the optical freeform components can eliminate the various aberration of optical system, improve the optical performance, reduce the weight of optical system etc, therefore, not only optical freeform components used in aerospace, aviation, defense and military fields, but also for consumers industry area, such as digital cameras, scanners, photo displays and other optoelectronic products contain optical freeform surface components.At present, mainstream domestic and international optical design software (CODE V, ZEMAX) can design optical freeform surface, but the stored file format is not suitable for numerical control programming. Many commercial CAD/CAM software (Master CAM, Unigraphics, etc) most of CNC machine tools or for general face milling machining center or ball mill. There is a greater difference between optical freeform components processing and traditional optical components processing, as the traditional spherical or aspheric optical elements with rotary axis of symmetry, a two-axis ultra-precision machine can process. Therefore, the optical freeform surface usually use diamond "Flying"'processing, the common CAM software is not automatic NC programming for it, and traditional processing equipment and processing technology can not meet optical products required high processing precision. At present, there is no the software that directly through optical freeform surface design results and cutting parameters to automatically generate tool path.Optical freeform surface model is mainly derived from the results of optical design software, can be transformed into a standard CAD format file, the problem is existence between CAD software and CAM software about the compatibility of data exchanged, U.S. industry and the American National Standards Institute jointly developed a standards of Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES), to solve the compatibility between different systems of data exchange issues. Almost all well-known international CAD/CAM software configuration of the IGES interface. For the development software system can read the data of optical design software designed the optical freeform surface model, must for the preparation of the corresponding IGES data interface for developed software systems, in order to integration and data sharing with optical design software.In view of optical design software designed the optical freeform surface storage format is not suitable for numerical control programming, and the common CAM software can not diamond "Flying" processing for automatic optical freeform surface CNC programming these deficiencies. Therefore, this article developed a software can integration with optical design software design optical freeform surface representation, and based on the tool geometry parameters, cutting parameters and FTS movement patterns automatic generation diamond turning optical freeform surface tool path. In the paper the software development process using the most popular software development tools Visual Basic.NET, development environment in Visual Basic.NET main develop the software interface and the IGES interface for data compatibility exchange and optical design software. Then call the Matlab graphics library for numerical computing and graphical representation. The main function of the software:(1) The mathematical equations can be used to describe a typical optical freeform surface, in the dialog box enter the relevant parameters of optical freeform surface, then in the main interface of the graphics window show the corresponding optical freeform surface.(2) Optical design software for the design of a class of more complex optical freeform surface, the software can read the IGES file format of optical freeform surface of optical design software. The document by extracting the characteristics of optical freeform information an data, and NURBS-based reconstruction of optical freeform surface.(3) The software also integrates optical freeform surface diamond turning tool path generation algorithm. Using this algorithm can generate tool path for a typical optical freeform surface.The successful development of the software will solve the problem of the compatibility of data exchanged between the optical design software and CAM software. In the software can representation for the optical design software designed optical freeform surface. On the basis, develop the best tool path generation and automatic NC program can simulate the freeform surface machining. Which do not have to spend a lot of time to write program and expensive cutting tests, shorten the processing cycle of optical freeform surface.