Sunex just joined the DVN community last November, and it was a real pleasure to be invited to the R&D and manufacturing plant in Kunshan during my last trip to China. Sunex are a well-known company for optical lens assemblies, including HD, which we can find on many headlamps (Porsche HD matrix and additional German OEMs) from a variety of major lighting tier-1s.
Sunex are a privately-owned U.S. company founded in 1997, with three plants in China. 20 people work in their design office in the USA for optical lens design for automotive, medical, robotics, media, security, and geospatial systems. Automotive represents around 55 per cent of their global revenue.
Sunex have an extensive automotive lens portfolio, and they provide OEMs and tier-1s around the world with imaging optics for ADAS, surround view, DMS/OMS, lidar systems, and projection lenses for headlamps.
From their experience in camera lenses, with over 120 million automotive camera lenses delivered globally, Sunex have since 2019 developed deep design and process expertise for all-glass (spherical and aspherical) and hybrid (glass + aspherical optical plastic) for microLED and DMD-based projection lenses. Sunex handle optical and mechanical design (two PhDs in the USA and 12 optical engineers in China) as well as the development of prototypes and in-house series manufacturing processes for the complete system.
In 2024, they delivered over 400,000 complete optical HD lenses. While the initial design focus and products in series production focused on complete glass lens systems, Sunex’s expertise has helped shape the industry’s trend towards hybrid solutions (glass and PMMA) to reduce weight and size – especially depth – while maintaining thermal stability and lifetime performance.
I was able to see the complete assembly steps for HD lens modules – glass moulding, assembly, lens gluing, final optical checks for MTF / DOF / distortion after 100-per-cent vibration testing. Multiple large in-house coating chambers support series production throughput and application requirements, e.g., applying anti-reflective coatings of 60 or more layers.
Sunex also have all the capabilities in-house for highly accurate tool insert milling to support fast prototyping and series production.
