Standard Lens Options
Smart Vision Lights offers a variety of standard lens options.
These lens options provide a range of illumination angles, working distances, and patterns.
Example: Lens options on LXE Series Lights:
Standard LED lenses, like above, are typically plastic. Smart Vision Lights also has silicone lens technology. Silicone lenses allow custom beam-shaping and light guides. Additionally, this technology can be used with UV wavelengths where conventional lens technology fails.
Silicone Optics Lenses
Optical-grade silicone offer an exciting alternative for lighting manufacturers. Unlike glass and plastics, silicone:
- Does not age like polycarb, vinyl, or acrylic
- Does not yellow with time
- Does not craze due to heat, exhibiting no material
- Changes in temperature range from –115°C to 200°C
- Does not react to UV light
- Does not react with most harsh chemicals
- Offers high transmission across a broad spectrum, with 95% transmission or better from 365 nm (UV) to 2000 nm (NIR)
While silicone offers these material benefits compared to plastic molded lenses, it also offers advanced manufacturing benefits. For example:
- Silicone is very robust. It maintains its optical function over its lifetime and is resilient to changes in the environment.
- Optical-grade silicone is capable of holding fine structure patterns and can possess reverse curves in a single molding tool; this cannot be done in conventional plastics.
- Silicone’s ability to form complex optical elements using multiple shots in a single injection mold allows for a lower total cost solution for complex, multi-part optics
Custom Optics Design
Smart Vision Lights designs lenses for optical solutions.
Download our white paper Silicone Optics: Maximum Light Control with Minimum Cost for additional information.
The lens technology described above, sets the beam-shape for the light. Adding frosting to the lens, or a diffuser, modifies the beam-shape to scatter the light and make a softer diffused illumination. Diffusion also scatters the beam and makes a wider footprint.
A focused, but non-diffused beam, provides direct, on-axis illumination. This is the brightest illumination type and is desirable in some cases, but can enhance glare and reflections making the light source harsher.
Example of a Diffused Light Source:
Example of a Focused, Direct Light Source:
