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I’ve been following the YouTube channel Breaking Faucets for fairly a very long time. It’s a enjoyable mixture of science, engineering and know-how overlaying physics and the occasional little bit of chemistry with some simply flat out cool experiments, loopy tech and engaging gradual movement in between – like that point when he made his personal scanning laser microscope (it’s fairly cool, you must watch it).Properly, now he’s having a go at making some optical lens components. And it seems, making lenses from epoxy resin is a little more tough than one may initially suppose.He’s not making components for the kind of lenses we’d usually use on a digital camera, however components are components. All of them work on the identical fundamental rules. To repeat optical components, although, it’s not merely a case of encasing a component in silicone, grabbing any previous epoxy off the shelf and casting it into the aforementioned mould. There’s a number of caveats and the general method is one that’s going to require a number of testing and workflow refinement to get good.There’s the truth that at the least some forms of silicone will keep on with the forms of glass usually used for lens components, making them tough to forged with out some type of mould launch, or overlaying the optical ingredient in one thing – each of which can deform that clean glassy floor to a point. You’ve acquired shrinkage to have in mind, too – Epoxy resin will usually shrink because it cures, doubtlessly leading to a component that’s smaller than it needs to be. After which there’s air bubbles to consider.And people are simply points in replicating the ingredient’s form and floor and ensuring you possibly can see by way of it correctly. This doesn’t even contact on issues like inner stresses or the index of refraction of various kinds of resin vs optical glass. As quickly as you modify the fabric, the identical construction doesn’t essentially bend the sunshine in the identical approach and the interior stresses of the fabric because it cures can imply that the index of refraction is totally different all through your ingredient, inflicting all types of potential visible points.A few of the challenges may be overcome just by making smaller optics, however that isn’t at all times doable. It’ll rely in your wants and the optics you might have at your disposal that you just want to clone. Scaling it as much as bigger optics will certainly be a problem, however it’s one which BT plans to deal with by way of experimentation with totally different casting and moulding supplies.If the method may be refined, I ponder if this could permit for the creation of recent customized lens ingredient designs within the pc to stop the necessity to have an precise pre-existing ingredient manufactured from glass as your supply. For those who may 3D print with resin, end and polish the print by hand after which clone with optically clear resin it will open up all types of choices. In fact, the simple response to that is “simply print with clear resin!” which is doubtlessly doable, however most “clear” printing resin tends to go yellow fairly simply as they’re a bit extra prone to UV gentle than two-part casting resins.I’m positively trying ahead to the follow-up to this video!
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