business profile
optics O
One-stop for
Warren clark follows the story of Opco Laboratory, a specialist uS optics company looking for international growth
pco Laboratory began in 1976, albeit on a relatively informal basis, when Saverio Maldari (known
as Sam) had a vision of creating a company to provide optical coatings and services. Having previously worked for Fisher Scientific in the field of analytical instrumentation, Sam’s first instinct was to concentrate on providing metallic coatings for optics used in the analytical market, such as spectrometers. Sam’s first office and workshop was the basement of his home, and his first jobs were refurbishing optical instruments – whereby Opco would strip, service and coat the optics, extending the life of the equipment. As word spread of the quality of the work Opco was doing, Sam expanded the range of services he offered to include optical fabrication, grinding and polishing. This enabled the company to offer a one-stop shop for optics. Ultimately, this led to the formal incorporation of Opco Laboratory in 1983, by which time optical fabrication was firmly part of the company’s portfolio, and the coatings business was growing rapidly. Its range of services meant Opco could provide customers with various configurations of lenses, prisms, beamsplitters, windows, and mirrors, made from a variety of glasses and crystals, and offer reflective coatings of enhanced aluminium, silver and gold, and transmission coatings from the deep UV to the far IR. To sustain its growth, in 1988 Opco moved into a new 10,000 square foot facility. The markets that Opco served
David Maldari
had also grown beyond analytical instrumentation to the broader
8 electro optics l june 2011 the opco headquarters
medical sector, as well as telecom, defence and illumination. In 1990, Opco added optical
replication to its list of capabilities. This process transfers a precision reflective optical surface from a master to another substrate – usually one of lower cost. This allows customers to produce quantities of exact duplicates more cost-effectively, while maintaining the optical quality of the master. At first, this area of the business dealt mainly with interferometrically-ruled gratings, although now it serves just about any optical surface in a wide range of markets, including analytical, medical, semiconductor, and defence. This process also allows an optical surface to be
together for the customer’s benefit. Philosophically, we believe that Opco is an extension of our customer’s facility.’
As the 90s progressed, Opco added optical assembly to its portfolio of services. David adds: ‘Here, we were able to reassure customers that our previous experience in handling sensitive optical components in Class 1000 cleanrooms placed us one step ahead of our competition.’
In the late 90s, Opco added CNC grinding, polishing, dicing,
customers really
appreciate the fact that we offer a genuine one-stop shop
applied to a monolithic mechanical part, rather than having to use optical assembly to attach one component to the other. Replicated optics reduces cost, weight, assembly and alignment time.
Sam remains chairman and chief executive of the company, and his son David (now president) has worked alongside him for several years, gaining particular experience in the optical manufacturing part of the business.
‘In general, customers really
appreciate the fact that we offer a genuine one-stop shop, with so many capabilities and disciplines under one roof,’ says David. ‘It means we control the quality of the entire process, and with all our departments closely located, we can all work
and curve generating capability, and interferometry, centration scopes, and broader range photospectrometers to their metrology department. The metrology department was now capable of measuring very complex optics, and considered one of the best equipped in the industry. Opco Laboratory continued to develop each of its markets. Within medical, it was servicing ophthalmic, dermatology, surgical and biomedical equipment; in defence/aerospace – night vision, target acquisition, and surveillance; in analytical instrumentation – spectral identification; and in the semiconductor market – vision systems and wafer inspection. ‘The service side of our business is extremely important to us,’ says
www.electrooptics.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36