Assembly

Lens stacks built against the datum scheme, not the bench fixture in front of the operator.

Optical assembly fails late when the fixture, the bond-line, or the tolerance stack got decided after the molding ran. We design assembly fixtures with the same DFM mindset that ran on the molded element — modular from prototype to ramp, datum-locked, and tied to a per-step inspection gate.

Discuss an assembly program

UV-cemented · Endoscope · Sensor stack · Active alignment

Assembly types

The five build patterns that cover most polymer-optic assemblies.

UV-cemented doublets and triplets: Two- and three-element bonded groups using engineered UV-cure adhesives selected against the program's thermal cycle and the polymer pair's CTE behaviour. Bond-line thickness controlled per drawing.
Endoscope optical assemblies: Relay groups, objectives, and eyepieces — multi-element stacks where the dimensional stack-up across half a dozen elements decides whether the image circle and pupil land where the system needs them.
Sensor cover and window subassemblies: Cover-window plus seal stacks for image-sensor packages, including bonding to housing and verification of optical clear aperture against the sensor's active area.
Active-alignment cells: Lens-to-sensor active alignment with through-focus MTF feedback, locked off with engineered adhesive. The right call when passive tolerance stack-ups don't meet the system MTF target.
Multi-element optical stacks: General lens-stack assembly into customer-supplied or in-house housings, fixtured for the per-element datum scheme that matters to image quality.

Fixturing approach

Three principles that decide whether the prototype recipe survives ramp.

Designed in-house: Assembly fixtures are designed against the part's datum scheme — not bought generic and shimmed. The fixture and the optical drawing are reviewed together before the first build.
Modular for prototype-to-production: Prototype fixtures share datums with the production fixture, so the alignment recipe carries from the first build through SOP. The fixture does not become a new variable at ramp.
Datum-locked: Critical optical surfaces register against the same datum the molded part registers against in its housing. Stack-up errors get caught at the fixture review, not at the system test.

Volume range

Prototype, pilot, and production builds out of the same line.

Prototype: One-off through engineering build
Pilot: Hundreds to low thousands per year
Production: Up to several hundred thousand assemblies per year on the right product mix

In-process inspection

Every step that locks an optical relationship has an inspection gate.

Pre-assembly element inspection

Each optical element is inspected against its incoming criteria — surface, coating, and dimensional — before it is committed to a stack. A bad element does not get bonded into a group.
In-process inspection between critical steps

Every step that locks an optical relationship — cement cure, active alignment lock-off, seal cure — has an inspection gate before the next step is allowed to start.
Final functional verification

Functional check against the customer's acceptance criteria — through-focus MTF, transmitted-wavefront residual, image-circle position — depending on what the assembly is.

Traceability & serialization

Per-assembly traceability for programs that require it.

Every assembly carries the lots of its critical elements through to the build record. On programs that require it (medical-device assemblies, defense end-items, automotive safety functions) we serialize the finished assembly, link it to the build record, and retain the record under the program's retention requirement. Customer audit access is supported as part of the program quality agreement.

Related capabilities

Bring the optical drawing, the housing interface, and the system MTF target.

We will tell you whether passive stack-up will meet the spec, where active alignment earns its time on the bench, and what inspection gates we put between the steps.