EPFL Printing Symposium 2019: Additive Optics Design and Manufacturing Technology have Married!

On May 24th, 2019, the Luximprint team returned to EPFL Lausanne for its annual lectures on Additive Optics Fabrication technology. Joined by Physionary, one of Luximprint’s preferred Optics Design partners, an international audience of Doctoral and Postdoctoral Students was addressed during an interactive seminar in order to get them prepared for their praxis work. Exchanging the latest in advanced optics design and rapid optical prototyping is one of the key areas of education the Luximprint team is paying much attention to. We believe that shaping a better future for optics starts here!

Additive Optics Manufacturing by Luximprint

Additive manufacturing of custom LED optics is a future proof methodology of rapid prototyping optical components using digital 3D printing technologies. The seminar on ‘Custom Optics Design meets Additive Optics Fabrication Technology teaches practical lessons on how to design for Luximprint additive optics manufacturing by using state-of-the-art ‘target-to-source’ optics design software from Physionary, aiming to overcome the challenges in today’s’ industrial engineering landscape.

Image of Marco de Visser Luximprint explaining Additive Optics Manufacturing Technology

Marco de Visser of Luximprint explaining the basics of Additive Optics Manufacturing technology.

Design for Optics 3D Printing by Physionary

A combination of those two emerging technologies is extremely powerful, as the intelligent piece of design software incorporates and considers the optical 3D printing platform capabilities when generating a design for manufacture. Product developers, on the one hand, can now benefit from the ‘printing-ondemand’ of custom optics, with no costly commitments to tooling and inventory, while designers and specifiers can get uncompromised solutions, meeting the exact quantities and needs for their custom project.

Image supporting the explanation of Faceted Lens Technology by Suresh Christopher

Suresh Christopher of Physionary explains Faceted Lens Technology.

3D Printing and Target-to-Source Design Software – A Powerful Combination

With advanced software solutions and printing technologies combined, developing custom lens solutions becomes easy. Where the revolutionary software for custom lenses take into consideration the exact requirements and printing capabilities of the optical 3D printing process, the manufacturing process on its turn enables the processing of highly complicated surface textures at high speed and moderate cost.

Here’s a brilliant example of a Faceted Lens designed by Physionary Software and 3D printed by Luximprint Additive Optics Fabrication technology:

Image of demonstrator with Faceted Lens Technology for EPFL

Yet, there is much more to follow in the time to come. Please keep following us via this blog or our social media channels for further updates.

And please enjoy some impressions of the EPFL Advanced Manufacturing Symposium in the meantime: