Parametric modeling of zoom lens barrels

摘要

Today's customer requires zoom lens designs that are compact, inexpensive, and at six-sigma quality levels. While incorporating these customer requirements, a design team must often work within compressed design cycles and minimal product development budgets. These customer and project constraints, coupled with the inherent complexity of a zoom lens module, force the design team to try new and innovative techniques to deliver their products. This paper presents the methods used to develop lens barrels for several zoom lens module projects at Eastman Kodak Company. The lens barrel, a critical interface between the mechanical and optical systems, presented a technical barrier from both an engineering analysis and manufacturing perspective. The method used to overcome these barriers consisted of identifying several dey functional parameters, creating a parameter-driven 3-D solid model in a commercially available CAD system, and then using the model to make iterative, data-driven design decisions while leveraging the model to create engineering drawings and the necessary prototypes and production tooling. As a result, the designs were able to meet their size, cost, and design cycle time requirements while realizing a better than anticipated first pass yield and quality level.