Shaping of steel mold surface of lens array by electrical discharge machining with spherical ball electrode.

We propose a method for fabricating a spherical lens array mold by electrical discharge machining (EDM) with a ball-type electrode. The electrode is constructed by arranging conductive spherical balls in an array. To fundamentally examine the applicability of the proposed EDM method to the fabrication of lens array molds, we use an electrode having a single ball to shape a lens array mold made of stainless steel with 16 spherical elements, each having a maximum depth of 0.5 mm. As a result, a mold surface is successfully shaped with a peak-to-valley shape accuracy of approximately 10 μm, and an average surface roughness of 0.85 μm.