I am working on a custom spot light project where weight is an issue and I need to use a lightweight lens to collimate light from a LED (Cree XP-L HI, or Nichia NC3W121A). The lens needs to be aspheric and around 70mm in diameter. I am currently using one from fasttech but it is too heavy. I tried to search for plastic aspheric lens but I haven’t been able to find one larger than 50mm. I mainly search for flashlight lens but I also tried magnifiers lenses. It seems that large plastic aspheric lenses are not used in flashlights but are they used in other applications? Any suggestions on where to find one in stock?
Try Anchor Optics and Edmunds. Plastic lenses are generally way more expensive than glass, due to the more sophisticated manufacturing techniques and cost of plastic over glass.
I am surprised to hear that plastic lenses are more expensive than glass ones. Plastic ones are made with injection molding which usually is an inexpensive manufacturing process. In any case I tried Anchor Optics and Edmuns and neither sells plastic optics larger than 25mm in diameter.
Maybe an Aspheric Fresnel lens could fit the bill?
I ordered one to try but the application requires projecting a clear image of the LED emitter and I read the fresnel lens are not good in imaging applications
your going to have to scour chinese website after chinese website… places like edmunds and thorlabs and others? specialize in high end lenses, for people working on projects, in a place with a BUDGET… not people working at home like all of us. I mean, i noticed that when all those “100 to 200 dollar glass lenses” on edmunds go onto ebay and surplus shed? they’re like 7 bucks apiece, lol
there must be a hundred websites similar to amazon, but more obscure… i do remember once being SOMEWHERE, and they had a zillion lenses, plastic and glass, in all sizes and shapes… just cant remember where it was. You know the nights? half the night up clicking looking, and 1200 clicks later you couldnt find it again if you tried.