Achieving Highly Stable Removal Rate in Small Tool Polishing of Glass Lenses

Abstract

Abstract The demand for improving the image quality of cameras has increased significantly, especially in industrial applications, such as broadcasting, on-vehicle, security, factory automation, and medicine. Surface of glass lenses, which is a key component of cameras, is formed and finished by polishing using small tools. However, the existing small tool polishing technologies exhibit serious problems including an unstable removal rate with the accumulated polishing time. In concrete, low removal rate at the beginning of the polishing process and sudden decrease in the removal rate during the polishing process significantly deteriorate stability of the removal rate. To improve the stability of the removal rate, we proposed a vibration-assisted polishing method using newly developed polishing pads with titanium dioxide particles in the previous work. Polishing experiments on glass lenses confirmed that the variation in the removal rate was suppressed by the developed polishing method; however, the reason for the improvement, in concrete, the relation between the vibration of polishing pressure and the stability of the removal rate remains unknown. In this study, we investigated and clarified the effect of the vibration of polishing pressure on the surface conditions of polishing pads, which strongly affected removal rate.