Rayform (1 Viewer)

http://rayform.ch/

Hopefully this technology will later on serve to net shape more useful flat optical surfaces than just life style items like perfume bottles as shown so far. With thin and flat lenses and mirrors, completely new optical systems might get possible.

Hi Hans,

thanks for the interesting link - nice read at breakfast, although I'm not sure if this will change the game for us a lot.

It seems to me they took the principle of a Fresnel lens over the top quite a bit to calculate the form of an optical surface which contains the image information of a specific image, probably in combination with interference effects. Not sure if they also have made advances in fabricating those surfaces...

Mirrors can be quite flat anyways from an optical point of view. The reason why they need to be massive are pesky mechanical problems.
The thin and flat lens was developed in the 18th century in France for use in lighthouses and is credited to french physicist Agustin-Jean Fresnel, who built the first usable one.

Regards,

Joachim

Hans Weigum said:

http://rayform.ch/

Hopefully this technology will later on serve to net shape more useful flat optical surfaces than just life style items like perfume bottles as shown so far. With thin and flat lenses and mirrors, completely new optical systems might get possible.

Click to expand...

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. The end effect is very similar to Holography but does not need a laser. Based on what I saw in the video's it uses "refraction" to modulate the amplitude of light and create an image. The key elements must be the algorithm that calculates the required glass surface shape and the technology to etch such a shape.

Holography can create "3D" images but this method create a 2D, intensity images. Also, I don't think they could create color..(?)