Drum & Half Drum Lenses

Drum lenses and half drum lenses are adapted ball lenses. Drum lenses are manufactured by axial grinding and hence removing the outside proportion of the sphere. The resulting drum lens is then easier to handle. As a drum lens has a ground outside diameter it’s therefore easier to mount and align into optical systems as the outside diameter is cylinder in shape. The two spherical lens shapes either ends of the drum lens are still perfect for fibre-coupling and endoscopy applications.

Half drum lenses are what the name suggests a drum lens that is cut in half. A half drum lens is manufactured by taking a full drum lens that has two spherical faces and then polishing one of its spherical faces to a plano flat face resulting in an elongated planoconvex lens.

Our range of bespoke drum and half drum lenses can be manufactured from a range of materials; N-BK7 or equivalent is typically used in visible applications. Quartz and UV fused silica is used for applications working in deep UV wavelengths down to185nm; these materials are also useful in the NIR wavelengths up to 2000nm. A range of high index materials in Schott and Ohara grades such as Lasfn9, Lasf35, S-Lah65 and Lah78 are available for very short focal lengths with minimal spherical aberrations.

Every component is individually tested by our highly skilled technicians in our state of the art metrology lab to ensure all components meet our high quality standards. Please contact our multilingual technical sales team and discover how Knight Optical’s high quality drum and half-drum lenses can improve your instrumentation and supply chain experience.