Plastics optical components can be coated in poly-siloxane and acrylate based resin blends to impart more robust properties:
Dip coating gives the widest flexibility in coating geometry and coating thickness control for thermally cured coatings, where as precision spray coating gives production automation advantages for UV cured resin systems.
Abrasion resistant and chemical resistant outer layers can be applied to optical products by the In Mould Labelling (IML) process.
A hard coated die-cut film component is located into the mould tool and when the polymer is injected into the tool, the film label is bonded to the outer surfaces of the finished moulded part.
The IML process enables optical functions to be applied onto the optical film label in its flat form, prior to in-moulding to the final product.
Optical Functions such as, anti-reflection, dichroic filters, mirror surfaces and heat reflection properties can be added.
In some cases, such as visors, it is useful to protect both inner and outer surfaces of the visor with the IML process and POL has developed tooling and process techniques to do this.
Optical properties can also be applied by direct vacuum coating, including metal reflective layers, anti-reflection through to complex wavelength tuned dichroic multi-layers.
