HOW MUCH DOES A CUSTOM LENS COST?

As seen from the above chart, the cost of a single element drops significantly with quantity. This is also the case with assemblies, as shown below.

The above chart shows the cost vs. quantity for a simple 4 element lens assembly with standard testing and shipping. You may have noticed that the curves for single element and full assembly are very similar. Below is a chart of normalized cost vs. quantity with both single element and full assembly curves.

An Aside on Prototyping

The above charts help to understand why prototyping is so expensive. The inherent reason for the price increase at low quantity is that the grinding and polishing processes to make spherical lens surfaces require a lot of tooling and setup time. Once the tooling and setup are complete making additional lens elements is easy. Often, the high price of prototyping causes companies to pursue purchasing large quantities right away. Deciding to manufacture production quantities without prototyping may be tempting, but we have found that it is usually unwise.

A prototyping round allows for the verification of the optical and mechanical performance and gives a chance to change the design before large quantities are ordered. This can be something as simple as changing a focus thread pitch to allow more precise focusing or could be a change to the F/# to increase the light input to decrease camera exposure time. More often than not, a prototyping round produces a lens with improved function and performance.

Once prototyping has been completed, larger quantities may be ordered at a lower cost per lens. Often, for quantities > 50-100, we are able to deliver lenses at or lower than stock lens pricing.

If a customer already has a completed lens design the estimation process is very easy. We can generally offer better than stock optics pricing for quantities of 50 or more. Feel free to send us your optical drawings here for a quote!

The estimation process becomes more difficult if the customer only has a set of specifications for a lens that has never been designed. Fortunately, with a good starting point selection, a preliminary design can generally be made fairly quickly. We offer a discovery phase, in which we make a preliminary design based on your specifications and give an estimate on the total cost for manufacturing a custom lens that meets them.

Once a preliminary design is completed, the next step is to modify the lens design to be manufacturable. This is the process of desensitizing the lens elements so that they are cheaper and easier to manufacture. This process includes controlling ray angles at lens surfaces, minimizing individual surface aberration contributions, eliminating concentric lenses, minimizing glass materials, etc. Once this is done, a tolerance sensitivity analysis can be completed and the lens drawings can be made so the actual cost of the lens can be determined.

If you are interested in learning more, or are ready to start a new lens design project, feel free to click the "Get Started" button below.

Get Started

The cost of a custom lens can vary from under a hundred dollars for a simple singlet to many thousands for a complex multi-element lens assembly. There are many factors that affect the cost of a custom lens, including number of elements, spherical or aspherical surfaces, overall diameter, quantity ordered, material used, delivery speed, etc. Below is a chart showing the cost vs. quantity for a 25mm diameter singlet lens with 2 spherical surfaces and standard delivery of 14-16 weeks.