An error compensation method for single point oblique axis grinding considering the grinding wheel wear

With the increasing amount of high quality optical products, the manufacturing requirement for the high-precision optical glass lenses is on the rise. Grinding is typically the main manufacturing process for the optical mold. The degree of wheel wear has a direct impact on the precision of the grinding process. In this paper, the wear rule of grinding wheel in the grinding process of optical aspheric surface is studied with the in-site wear measurement system. A new image processing method and a wear degree evaluation method are proposed. The wear prediction model for the grinding wheel is established. Then a modified compensation method of optical aspheric surface considering grinding wheel wear is proposed. The optical aspheric surface is then compensated using a modified multinomial equation considering grinding wheel wear. The results demonstrate that the profile error of optical aspheric surface can be reduced to less than 150 nm. The proposed compensation method that takes into account the grinding wheel wear can highly improve the grinding precision and efficiency of optical aspheric surface as compared with the conventional compensation method.