Building DIY cylindrical lens?

Originally Posted by CAVX

When you say "built" are you asking if someone was able to make an anamorphic lens from actual lenses (the answer being yes) or if someone made their own lenses similar to the way people were making the prisms years ago (the answer being no)?

There is too much precision required here for any DIYer to do this.

You can buy your own lenses and make your own case, but know now, the glass is not cheap. Your still looking at a few grand for a good set of corrected cylindrical optics

Originally Posted by CAVX

As long as the case is made to hold both lenses vertically aligned and parallel to each other, you should be able to make this work.

Originally Posted by CAVX



These lenses need to be within less than 1/60th of a degree to perfect vertical alignment with less 100th of a degree preferred. This is not really DIY stuff, though it can be done in DIY. Even though I assemble my own lenses, I have had to spend more on set up gear than some people want to spend on their entire system set ups. This is includes but is not limited to a cleaning station and gear for laser alignment.

Each lens can take several hours to get aligned and tested. This is not a case of lets slap it all in a MDF box and whack it in front of the projector. This needs precision and why all my case parts are machined.

Originally Posted by Doc Pete

Rukus29,
I too have thought about trying to make a cylinder lens. Right now I'm finishing the building of my theater and then if i don't get into building guitar amps, i was gonna try to build a cylinder scope lens. I'm an optometrist so I can easily get high grade glass cylinder lenses, with anti-reflection, for very little cost.
No one on here will give you any info on how to build one, or more importantly, the optical settings due to the fact that they spent a bunch of time figuring it out and are now selling the products and don't want to lose out to DIY folk making their own. I personally think the cylinder lenses are marked up A LOT, but then again that's the market price until someone comes out with a cheaper version. But i could be wrong.
If building your own lens was this costly ("$$$$")and difficult to build your own cylinder lens then they would easily give that info out because they know you would fail and/or give up due to start up costs. So I'm thinking its not as bad as it sounds. 1/100ths of a degree would only be a measurement important to NASA definitely not to the system. Nobody can correct it that close, in fact that amount of detail is insignificant for a optical lens for a HT. IF that were true then the guy that had the -6.00 amount of astigmatism in his glasses would not be able to see anything with glasses as all glasses are corrected on intervals of 5 degrees, no where near 1/100th of a degree. If you make a system corrected to that detail and that is important to you then you need to get your eye prescription updated, for changes, every month!

It generally takes 4 cylinder lenses (cylinder lenses are the type used to correct peoples vision when they have astigmatism: ie eye shaped like an american football) The more lenses used, the more optical clarity that can be corrected for. But I haven't actually worked it out yet but the materials aren't that expensive nor do you need to work for NASA.

My 2 cents, thats all.

Originally Posted by CAVX

I do believe I stated 100% vertically aligned. This is nothing to do with 'splitting of colours', the CA correction in the lenses themselves handles that. I'm talking about getting the image to focus in both H and V plains at the same time. If you think you can just eye ball these in, think again.

Then go into manufacturing and show me how it can be done for less because I would love to be able to supply these lenses for less and not go broke in the process.