Researches Regarding the Topographic Analysis of the Surfaces of Transparent Lenses Produced by Stereolithography Additive Manufacturing

This paper presents the main results of some experiments carried out with the aim of investigating the Stereolithography (SLA) manufacturing process and evaluating the quality characteristics of the transparent lenses produced with this technology. By identifying and evaluating these aspects, research can contribute to the optimization of the SLA manufacturing process to obtain transparent lenses with optimal performance in various applications. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM), a comparative analysis of the lens structure revealed that the topographical parameters are different for flat and spherical lenses. Based on these results, the main conclusion of this study was that the SLA technique was a suitable method for manufacturing flat lenses with superior quality compared to the spherical ones. The different variation of calculated roughness values for flat and spherical lenses requires further research to obtain the appropriate manufacturing parameters needed to obtain high-quality lenses from inexpensive materials using SLA additive manufacturing technology.