Ball and Half Ball Lenses for Endoscopes

Our uncoated Precision Ball Lenses can be achieve a very high level of yield of magnification & are widely used for focusing & coupling light into and out of Microscopes. We can offer these in Sapphire, made from Al2O3, and BK7 or equivalent material. Sapphire allows for superior optical transmission qualities The key feature of ball lenses is their short back focal length allowing for precision coupling where size or space is a limiting factor in the system & therefore ideal in the use of Microscopes or microscopic attachments onto devices such as mobile phones. Ball Lenses are manufactured from a single substrate of glad and therefore, depending on the geometry of the input source, can focus or collimate light. Half Ball Lenses can also be used as an interchange with a full ball lens for more compact designs. Read the PDF for more information....

Knight Optical offer a range of Stock Ball Lenses and Half Ball Lenses, for use within Fibre Lasers. As the name suggests ball lenses are completely spherical lenses mostly made out of High Refractive Index Glass such as Sapphire, and LASFN-9 Glass. The reason ball lenses are most commonly used is for their ability to focus light when leaving a fibre optic, so that it can therefore be used for a laser application. The key feature of ball lenses is their short back focal length allowing for precision coupling where size or space is a limiting factor in the system. Ball lenses are typically used in pairs with one lens acting as a collimator for the second to focus the light back into the coupled fibre. Where a more compact solution is required a half-ball lens is typically more suitable. We hold a large inventory of Ball Lenses. •Stock sizes from 0.5 5mm to 10mm diameter. •Custom sizes available to quotation. •Half Ball lenses also available.

Knight Optical can offer Hot Mirrors for use in Heat-Sensitive Systems. We supply a range of hot mirrors for a variety of applications – all individually QA checked and metrology tested for quality to ensure parts meet customers’ specs. What’s more, our Hot Mirrors are supplied in a range of sizes and shapes with custom coatings tailored to meet your individual applications. Knight Optical supply precision optical components to customers working with Heat-Sensitive Systems. Hot Mirrors are designed to transmit visible wavelengths and to reflect heat, causing infrared wavelengths. Hot mirrors have a sharp cut-off between Infrared (IR) and visible because they have a dielectric coating that can be controlled for different AOIs (most commonly 0°). For systems that require heat shielding while still needing visibility, hot mirrors can be used. These can attenuate IR radiation and allow visible light, which permits your temperature-sensitive equipment to be visible.

Sapphire (Al2O3) is one of the hardest minerals and optical materials available for use in the range from UV up to 5µm. Sapphire is birefringent and if its use is for critical optical application then the crystal might have to be cut along the zero degree plane, or C-Cut. Random cut is usually cut along a plane that is 60° off-axis as the growth in this direction is the easiest to grow. Random cut is anything that is not the C-Cut angle. Sapphire can fluoresce depending upon the concentration of other minerals within the lattice, for example Iron (Fe) or Chromium (Cr). Clear Sapphire might fluoresce orange when illuminated by UV light if impurities are in the crystal. Fluorescent free Sapphire has to be grown from 'pure' feedstock and seed and in an environment that cannot place impurities into the lattice. Click PDF link to read more …...