Very often, technical glass products are produced either directly as semi-finished products such as wafers or tubes; if special surface shapes or special geometries are required, these can also be produced by forming processes. There are primary forming processes where the end product is obtained directly from the hot glass melt by drawing, floatation, molding, rolling, pressing, or blowing the still viscous glass mass. For the production of technical optics, lenses, or lens arrays, forming processes are typically used in which cold glass raw material is reheated so that it can be processed plastically.

End products can be aspheres, free-form optics, and segmented lenses to line generators, cylinders, and cylinder lenses as well as diffractive elements. The so-called molding production processes are effective production methods, where multiple devices could be produced in parallel. The device does not require any further process steps that change the optical surface. The only critical process step is the final singulation of the devices from their preform.

A laser cutting process is well suited for this purpose because, unlike sawing, it can also be used to produce free-form shapes or radii. Regarding the layouts, one is almost completely free and new designs are possible. In addition, the production chain benefits from the absence of particles and the high edge quality of the laser process.