OPTICAL MACHINING
Plastic is lightweight and offers better light transmission and higher impact resistance than glass. Controlled Fluidics offers optical machining services with a range of materials. From entire components to singular biodetection windows, Controlled Fluidics can support your design requirements.
For low to no diffraction applications, the optical machining process is the best choice for performance.
Material Choices
Controlled Fluidics offers plastic optics in Acrylic, Polycarbonate, Polystyrene, Rexolite, and COC/COP. Get a quote today and our engineers will help you select the best material for your project.
Weight: Lighter Is Better
Plastic optics are significantly lighter than glass — on the order of three times! As a result, our plastic options provide a particular advantage as optics increase in size.
Impact Resistance for Function and Safety
In applications requiring high impact resistance, plastic is the default choice. Materials such as polycarbonate are far less likely to fail under impact loading than a similar-size glass lens. In the event of damage, plastics produce substantially safer-to-handle shards than glass.
Improved Light Transmission
Optical plastics can cover a wide range of light transmittance. In particular, Acrylic transmits light more fully than most optical glass (94% range). However, there are other plastic materials comparable to optical glass in the visible spectrum. In applications requiring transmission of ultraviolet and near infrared, plastic lenses often perform better than optical glass.
Optical Machining Lowers Your Costs
The combination of injection molding for blanks and diamond turning produces lower-cost optics than the traditional glass-grinding process. This is especially true in high volumes, which also contain excellent repeatability.
Optical Machining Application
Controlled Fluidics manufactures single and multilayer bonded manifolds and plastic machined parts for analytical, industrial, medical/bio-medical and life science applications. The plastic components are produced in USP class 6 and FDA approved food-grade plastic materials. See through and optical material choices are Acrylic, Polycarbonate, Ultem, COP (Zeonor), COC (Topaz), Rexolite and Polystyrene.
Optical manifold applications allow for visual inspection, bubble detection, cell identification or fluid processing. The optical manifold has a clear window above the working fluid typically a channel section or larger chamber allowing for real time optical analysis. The manifolds are commonly integrated with UV-Visible, Near Infrared and FTIR spectroscopy instrumentation. The manifold’s detection system is often mounted close to the optically transparent sample chamber for monitoring, control and analysis.
Design requirements specify a square or round channel of appropriate size with highly polished surfaces. Expect the surface finish to be better than 2 microinchs to avoid diffraction of the laser or UV light source.
A common technology that makes use of optically clear manifolds and machined parts is flow cytometry. The optical plastic manifold allows for the analysis of cells or particles that flow past detection lasers in a salt solution. The scattering of light is analyzed for specific parameters related to the target particle. Other applications include gene sequencing, IVD, point of care, cell counters, and blood analyzers.