imaging
Generating seeds for a 16 mm machine vision lens with etendue's Seed Generator
A 16 mm f/2.8 lens with a 28° field of view: a manufacturable starting point in a few minutes, from a plain-language description
The specification
A machine vision camera needs a compact imaging lens: 16 mm focal length, f/2.8, a 28° full field of view, an object at infinity and visible light (F, d and C lines). The constraints: at most 6 elements, aspheric surfaces allowed, and a total track of no more than 50 mm.
From a description to a form
The specification is typed in plain words. etendue's Seed Generator reads it and fills in the full form (focal length, aperture, field, wavelengths, constraints), which the engineer checks and can edit at any time. Before running, the tool gives the chance of reaching a good starting point for this specification (92 % here) and proposes the lens architectures most likely to succeed. The engineer can also set mechanical limits, choose the glass catalogues or import their own, and choose up to three starting points to compare.
The result
After a few minutes, the starting points are ready and shown side by side, each with its full prescription, its ray trace and its measured quality.
| Quantity | Specification | Starting point |
|---|---|---|
| Focal length | 16 mm | 16 mm |
| Aperture | f/2.8 | f/2.80 |
| Total track | 50 mm at most | 22.8 mm |
| On-axis RMS spot | 2.97 µm (1.5 × the Airy radius of 2.0 µm) | |
| Worst-field RMS spot | 5.57 µm | |
| Manufacturability | manufacturable |
The starting point meets the aperture and the length constraint with a wide margin, and its spot stays within a few microns across the whole field. It opens in etendue in one click, ready to be optimised and toleranced.
The starting point generated for the 16 mm f/2.8 specification, traced in etendue.
Going further
The Seed Generator was tested at scale in our October benchmark, on 1,000 specifications and nearly 16,000 generated starting points. The results are available on our website.