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27 Jul 2006
Oxford Lasers to grow its business by 25% with a boost in its micromachining activities. Formerly a copper laser specialist, the company expects to reap the benefits of diversification.
Oxford Lasers, based in Didcot, UK has commissioned a new laser micromachining facility intended for high volume production of custom parts. At the same time, the company's existing micromachining facilities are being upgraded to enable higher positional accuracy in certain demanding laser manufacturing applications.
The company says it has experienced rapid growth in sub-contract demand from various industrial clients in the electronics, bio-medical, automotive, semiconductor, sensor and other high technology sectors.
Sub-contracting customers will be able to benefit from the latest infrared, visible and UV lasers with multi-axis part manipulation in various materials. Trepanning heads, optical and electron microscopes, vision systems for part location and CAD/CAM file conversion are all available for drilling holes down to 1 micron in diameter.
The new facility within the company's existing premises in Didcot, about 20km from Oxford, features both laser workstations and optics. There will be a 50% increase in the area dedicated to laser micromachining, which represents a capital investment of over GBP 100,000 ($186,000).
Materials processed include stainless steel, hardened steel, refractory materials, ceramics, diamond, polyimide and ABS; micro cutting with cut widths down to 5 micron in almost any material; and micro milling with feature sizes also down to 5 micron.
"Over the past 12 to 18 months the types of occasional micro-manufacturing jobs we do have become more frequent and more mainstream," said Andrew Kearsley, Oxford Lasers' research director and deputy chairman. "Many of the alternative techniques of manufacturing precision components have been running out of steam, but laser micromachining has been growing strongly."
"This growth is coming from a range of high technology businesses as their devices become ever more miniaturised. The types of product we make in this way include fuel injectors, emission sensors, inkjet printing heads for finer pitches - generally anywhere where the associated electronics are shrinking."
Typical applications of the micro-machined products include the production of bio-medical micro parts (such as gene analysis spotting pins); machining sensors; the manufacture of fuel injector nozzles and of semiconductor components (such as in alumina, silicon nitride or Vespel); dicing or scribing wafers (silicon or sapphire) and drilling micro nozzles (such as for microfluidic applications).
Business expansion
Oxford Lasers expects that its business as a whole will grow by at least 50% this year and that its wider laser micromachining sector will also grow by more than 50%. The new services division alone, which covers the servicing of lasers as well as the micromachining function, is expected to turn over more than GBP 1 million in 2006; the whole company's turnover should increase to about GBP 4 million.
"In terms of staffing the development will mean one or two extra people joining our existing team of around 30 this year and perhaps another laboratory with a couple more next year," added Kearsley. "Our markets are mainly in the UK and US and we believe there's enormous further potential in the US. We are also negotiating some contracts at the moment to sell further afield but mainly targeting the English-speaking markets."
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