Glass Rod Lens

Rod Lenses are polished on the circumference and ground on both ends. Optical performance is similar to a cylinder lens.Rod Lenses used to focus collimated light into a line in laser and imaging systems are available in a range of micro sizes.

Optical Glass rod lens are cylindrical lenes which has the geometrical form of a cylinder and has a polished mantle, while the two flat end surfaces may be ground. It is analogous to a ball lens for focusing in both directions.

Types of Optical Rod Lenses

Rod lenses are available with different optical materials,  glasses like fused silica and BK7, but also with crystalline materials like YAG or silicon, e.g. for infrared optics.
A rod lens can have diameters of a few millimeters, but there are also cylindrical microlenses with substantially smaller diameters. Small-diameter rod lenses are frequently used as fast-axis collimators for diode bars.

Specifications of Custom Glass Rod Lens

Focal Length of optical glass rod lens

There are two different definitions of focal length of a rod lens. The effective focal length, which is the distance between a plane through the center of the lens and the beam waist of an initially collimated input beam, is given by the equation