2025 The 19th Ningbo International Plastic and Rubber Industry Exhibition

June 12-14, 2025

Ningbo International Convention And Exhibition Center

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Latest News

The blue ocean market for optical grade plastic parts is opening up

In 2020, the VR/AR industry will usher in explosive growth, with shipments of VR equipment reaching 6.7 million units, a year-on-year increase of 72%. At present, the basic hardware performance of VR upstream is basically complete, and the downstream software ecology is becoming more and more abundant. Global shipments are expected to reach 8 million units in 2021, and approximately 14.8 million units in 2022, crossing an important threshold. Thanks to the high prosperity of the VR/AR industry, the market for optical lenses will also expand.


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Most optical plastics are thermoplastics, which are mainly used in larger batches of optical instruments to manufacture optical substrates, lenses, contact lenses, organic optical fibers, etc. Because optical plastics have the advantages of good plastic molding process characteristics, light weight, low cost, etc., optical plastics are currently used to manufacture optical parts, especially special optical parts are increasingly manufactured.

 

With the advancement of "Plastic Substitution of Glass", the market size of optical grade plastic parts has gradually exceeded 20 billion, which is a key equipment for the national "Independent Innovation Guidance Catalog for Major Technological Equipment". In addition, "plastics to replace glass" and "plastics to replace steel" are also one of the main trends in the development of auto parts. Compared with glass or steel, plastic has better molding advantages and is an important part of injection molds and hot runners.

 

Compared with optical glass, optical lenses currently mainly use optical plastic materials and injection molding processes, and their advantages are low cost and light weight. Injection molding is the preferred solution for VR optical lenses. VR optical lenses can magnify the screen image and provide a suitable FOV (field of view) to help human eyes focus on the screen clearly and obtain better immersion effects. It is an important part of the VR system. 

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Different from ordinary plastic products, optical grade plastic parts are more difficult to mold in terms of raw materials and molding processes, and require higher precision, which is a technical field that needs to be overcome for a long time. At present, the production technology of optical plastic parts in the fields of national defense and military industry, aerospace, deep-sea exploration, and automobile industry has become an important topic that needs to be solved urgently, and the application field will be further expanded.


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