February sees leading precision and micro injection moulding expert Accumold embark on its annual attendance at a number of industry’s leading trade shows, beginning with the SPIE Photonics West event in San Francisco, CA, USA 1-6 February.
On booth 2427 at Photonics West, Accumold will be showcasing its expertise as the world’s leading high-tech manufacturer of precision micro moulded plastic components with part geometries from 5cm to less than 1mm in size. With a 30-year plus pedigree at the cutting edge of miniaturisation and innovation in micro moulding, Accumold is adept at insert moulding, clean room moulding, and 2-shot moulding in materials including peek, Ultem, LCP, and most engineered thermoplastics.
While serving numerous industry sectors where there is a drive towards increasingly complex and increasingly small part and components, Accumold has been serving the micro optics market-place for decades, and has been involved with the manufacture of ground-breaking and highly innovative products on behalf of an array of companies from leading SME’s to large multi-national blue-chips.
The micro optics sector is characterised by the requirement for extreme accuracy, and products and components produced in a timely and cost-effective manner. As such, it is vital that OEMs locate and engage with a qualified and experienced micro moulding expert to ensure optimal outcomes.
Roger Hargens, President at Accumold says, “Like all niche micro manufacturing sectors, it is especially vital in the area of micro-optics that qualified micro-optic suppliers such as Accumold are engaged as early in the design process as possible, and are treated as a product development and manufacturing partner rather than a job-shop. It is only by doing this, and being able to superimpose specific micro manufacturing and micro-optic expertise on a particular project that an efficient and cost-effective solution can be realised.”
Accumold routinely assists in the design, tooling, and manufacture of micro-optic devices such as 250-micron fiber optic lenses, parallel array products, demux devices, and diffractive lenses. The company also has experience of moulding attenuated resins and adding IR, anti-reflective (AR), and reflective coatings onto plastics. The demands associated with running micro-sized optical couplers, integrating lenses into housings, replicating lens profiles within a quarter wave, and lens surface finishes within 50 angstroms requires that Accumold has a dedicated tooling expert on staff to advise on and optimise design and tooling for any OEM light transmission requirements.
Hargens continues, “Tooling challenges are only one consideration when manufacturing micro-optics, equally vital being moulding process parameter control, the supplier’s metrology equipment capabilities, and post moulding handling and assembly. Precise control of the shot size or volume of resin injected into the mould on each cycle is vital for the maintenance of accuracy and repeatability of micro-optics shot-to-shot and run-to-run. Once moulded, however, it is important to use a fully automated and hands-free assembly process, overcoming the basic logistical issues surrounding the removal of such tiny and delicate components while also ensuring that orientation is maintained and parts are not contaminated by touching.”
Accumold has partnered with many optics OEMs across the world, and with each the company operates strategically to ensure that the product development process is as efficient as possible. With an over 30-year association with micro moulding and micro manufacturing, Accumold is not only the most experienced micro moulder in the world, but also the largest, which affords its customers the reassurance of working with a robust and secure company that can provide efficiencies that lead to affordable pricing, and also one that has the capacity and infrastructure to ramp up to full mass volume manufacture.
Aaron Johnson, VP Marketing and Customer Strategy at Accumold concludes, “The extremely tight tolerances that are characteristic of micro-optic applications — coupled with the demands for expertise in tool construction and material selection — require that OEMs undertaking a micro-optic project engage with a partner such as Accumold in product development to ensure accurate, timely, and cost-effective manufacturing solutions.”
Accumold invites any attendees at Photonics West to visit at booth 2427 to see some examples of its micro moulding successes, and to discuss any micro-optics applications with a member of our expert team.