Title

Interaction Of N-Fk5 And L-Bal35 Optical Glass With Various Carbide And Other Precision Glass Mold Tooling

Keywords

Carbide; Degradation; EDS; Hot pressing; L-BAL35; N-FK5; Precision glass molding

Abstract

Precision glass molding (PGM) is an optical manufacturing process used to hot press optical glass into a specified lens shape. This is done by taking the glass to a temperature above Tg and exerting force using an upper and lower mold. These molds will, together, give the pressed lens its shape. This study focuses on the high temperature interactions between the mold tooling material and two optical oxide glasses, Ohara's L-BAL35 and Schott's N-FK5. Flat molds were used to press flat glass work pieces at high temperature and force; key post process parameters such as sample and mold surface contamination using EDS and visible degradation via SEM were catalogued and analyzed. The molds used were bare tungsten carbide (WC) and silicon carbide (SiC) with an amorphous SiC chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coating. The results showed that raw WC molds suffered the most degradation including physical damage as well as chemical adherence and reaction. The Ti binder used in the WC as well as some the tungsten itself transferred to both glasses and caused a white reflective layer to appear on the molded glass surface. Severe damage was evident after only 2 pressing cycles with potassium from N-FK5 being the most prominent chemical contaminant. N-FK5 proved to be the more corrosive of the two glasses in all occasions. The SiC coated molds fared better in terms of degradation than the WC, however sticking of glass to mold was a problem. © 2013 SPIE.

Publication Date

11-28-2013

Publication Title

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Volume

8884

Number of Pages

-

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2035217

Socpus ID

84888152730 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84888152730

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