Custom optical design, engineered to be built.
When catalog optics cannot meet your requirements, we design the system around them. Lens and mirror systems, illumination and laser optics — with simulation evidence, a tolerance budget and drawings for your manufacturing team.
What custom optical design actually involves
Custom optical design is not a lens picked from a catalog — it is a system engineered from your requirements: the aperture, waveband, field, package envelope and detector you actually have. We take an uncertain problem, settle the physics, and hand back a prescription that survives the glass shop, the alignment bench and the review board.
- Requirements first — your specification turned into a measurable optical budget before any glass is chosen
- Custom lens design — refractive, reflective and catadioptric; spherical, aspheric and freeform where it earns its cost
- Full custom optical system design — imaging, afocal, relay, projection, illumination and laser trains, opto-mechanics included
- Toleranced for manufacture — Monte-Carlo budgets designed to the tolerances your vendors can actually hold
- Vendor-ready — ISO 10110 drawings and an RFQ package, not just a pretty simulation
Custom optical design services we deliver
One accountable partner from concept to production optics — component-level custom lens design through full system architecture.
Custom imaging & lens systems
Bespoke imaging lenses and objectives designed to your MTF, distortion, relative-illumination and throughput budget across the real waveband — when no stock lens fits the aperture, field or envelope you're working in.
Custom optical system design
Afocal, relay, projection and multi-element architectures traded on performance, volume, cost and manufacturability, so you choose from quantified options rather than opinions.
Illumination & laser optics
Custom illumination and laser-delivery optics — Gaussian beam shaping, fiber coupling and radiometric budgets — engineered together with the imaging path, not bolted on after.
Tolerancing & manufacturability
Every custom design ships with a Monte-Carlo tolerance budget, compensator strategy and as-built performance prediction — the proof that the prescription is buildable, not just optimal on screen.
Custom optical design is one of six core optical design and engineering services. Redesigning an existing prescription or reviewing someone else's? See design audits & feasibility.
Custom designs we've delivered
Compact 500 mm / 5000 mm EFL RC telescope
A full imaging payload designed into a constrained envelope, with MTF, tolerance and compensator evidence.
Read →
VIS-NIR fluorescence ocular
A bespoke ocular designed for surgical fluorescence imaging across visible and near-infrared bands.
Read →
Curved window for robotic vision
A custom protective window analyzed and corrected so it stopped degrading the camera behind it.
Read →Custom optical design questions
What is custom optical design?
Custom optical design engineers a bespoke optical system — lenses, mirrors and their opto-mechanics — from your specific requirements rather than from a catalog. It covers first-order layout, aberration optimization, stray light control, tolerancing and vendor-ready documentation, so the design can actually be fabricated to cost and performance.
How is custom lens design different from stock optics?
Stock optics constrain your product to what already exists. Custom lens design engineers the optics around your envelope, waveband, detector and performance budget — closing requirements that catalog components can't meet, with a toleranced and manufacturable prescription instead of a compromise.
How much does custom optical system design cost?
We work in fixed-scope packages so cost is known before work begins. Most engagements start with a 1–3 week fixed-fee Optics Risk Diagnostic that establishes feasibility and a costed plan; the full custom design package is quoted per scope. Proposals typically return within 48 hours of a scoping call.
Do we own the custom design and the models?
Yes. Every engagement is NDA-first, and product-specific custom designs are assigned to you by contract. On design packages the Zemax OpticStudio / Speos models are deliverables — we don't hold your design hostage.
Have a requirement catalog optics can't meet?
Send us two paragraphs about what you're building. We'll tell you whether a custom optical design closes it — and start with the smallest engagement that de-risks your program.