Cylindrical lenses are typically square, circular, or rectangular. Shanghai Optics produces a line of cylindrical lenses in plano convex,  plano concave,  or aspheric shape. Special lenses available on request include bi-convex or double concave cylindrical lenses, parabolic mirrors, cylindrical ellipsoidal mirrors and double curved cylindrical lenses. Off-axis cylindrical mirrors, angled cylindrical mirrors, or fan shaped lenses can also be manufactured to meet a custom order.

Substrate options include Schott or Ohara glass, CDGM, Corning Fused Silica, JGS1 or JGS2. The surface quality of our cylindrical lenses is 20-10 after coating, and the clear aperture is greater than 90 percent of the central dimension.

The Plano Convex Cylindrical Lens

A plano convex cylindrical lens, also known as a positive cylindrical lens, will condense light on one axis.  It can be used to magnify an image in one direction, changing the aspect ratio. They will focus collimated light to a line, or to create a line image from a point of light. These lenses are used for such applications as laser projection and illuminating slit and line detector arrays. Two plano convex cylindrical lenses can be used to collimate and circularize the light emitted from a laser diode.

A plano convex lens should be oriented so that light is incident on the curved surface if you are focusing to a line. When collimating light, orient your lens so that the light from your line source is incident on the plano surface.

Plano Concave Cylindrical Lenses

Plano concave cylindrical lenses are called negative cylindrical lenses. They are similar to plano concave lenses, but act only on one axis. They can expand light on this single axis, and diverge collimated input light away from a line. Our negative cylindrical lenses can be used for laser line generation, one-dimensional image compression, or anamorphic beam shaping.  The curved surface of a negative cylindrical lens should face the source when it is used to diverge a beam, or aberration may become a problem.

Aspheric Cylindrical Lens

An aspheric cylindrical lens is to a cylindrical lens what an aspheric lens is to a standard spherical lens. Designed to reduce aberration, they provide the same one dimensional focusing a conventional cylindrical lens does. Their form is slightly deviated from that of a true cylinder, and they are used in applications similar to those of other cylindrical lenses: anamorphic beam shaping, collimating the output of a laser diode, or focusing a diverging beam on a detector array.