Abstract
The glass thermal forming process provides a high volume, low cost approach
to producing aspherical reflectors for x-ray optics. Thin glass sheets are shaped
into mirror segments by replicating the mold shape at high temperature. Heating
parameters in the glass thermal slumping process are crucial to improve surface
quality of the formed glass. In this research, the heating process of a thermal
slumping glass sheet on a concave parabolic mold was simulated with the
finite-element method (FEM) to investigate the effects of heating rate and soaking
temperature. Based on the optimized heating conditions, glass samples 0.5 mm thick
were formed in a furnace with a steel concave parabolic mold. The figure errors of
the formed glass were measured and discussed in detail. It was found that the formed
glass was not fully slumped at the edges, and should be trimmed to achieve better
surface deviation. The root-mean-square (RMS) deviation and peak-valley (PV)
deviation between formed glass and mold along the axial direction were 2.3
μm and 4.7 μm respectively.
© 2016 Optical Society of Korea
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