A coating partner for the polymer substrate you already have.
You have the part — molded elsewhere, diamond-turned in your own shop, or supplied through a different vendor — and you need a coating chamber that understands what polymer does under pump-down, heat, and ion bombardment. Send the substrate; we run it through the same IAD chambers our in-house programs use.
For customers with their own substrate and no in-house coating partner.
Most coating houses are set up around glass — and most polymer coating failures trace back to a recipe that was cross-applied from glass without re-tuning the thermal budget, the pre-treatment, or the layer-stress profile. Coat as a Service is the same polymer-first process we use on the parts we mold ourselves, opened up to substrates that came from somewhere else.
Four steps from a first sample to a released production lot.
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1 · Sample submission
Send a representative substrate, the spectral target, the environmental envelope, and the end application. We confirm the substrate is one we can coat without thermal-budget surprises.
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2 · Coating-design proposal
We return a stack proposal — layer count, materials, predicted spectrum, and the polymer-specific risks we plan to design around. Expect to discuss adhesion strategy and thermal-cycle exposure here.
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3 · Witness-sample run
A small lot through the chamber on the proposed recipe. Spectral measurement, adhesion check, and (where relevant) a representative environmental cycle. The witness sample is the gate to production.
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4 · Production lot
Recipe locked, fixturing dialed in, lot released against the agreed acceptance criteria. Reorders run on the same recipe at the shorter reorder lead time.
New designs land at witness in weeks; reorders run faster.
- New design
- 4–6 weeks to witness
- Reorder
- 2–3 weeks lot turn
- MOQ
- None for engineering samples; production batches scale from 50 parts upward
What we need with the first substrate to give you a useful proposal.
- Substrate drawing
- Geometry, clear-aperture definition, datum scheme, and any cosmetic exclusions. Tell us what surfaces are coated and what is masked.
- Substrate certificate of conformance
- Material grade, lot, supplier, and any pre-treatment already applied. Coating recipes depend on it; this is not optional.
- Target spectral requirement
- Reflectance or transmission curve with tolerance band, angle of incidence, and polarization assumptions. Single number specs (e.g. 'AR-coated visible') need to become a curve before we quote.
- Environmental requirement
- Operating temperature range, humidity exposure, cleaning protocol, and any qualification standard the program already commits to (MIL-STD-810, IEC 60068, customer internal).
- End application
- What the part does in the system. Adhesion strategy and overcoat selection look different for an automotive sensor cover than a medical endoscope — knowing the use saves a recipe iteration.
Related capabilities
- finish Evaporative Coatings AR, mirror, beamsplitter, and bandpass coatings via thermal and e-beam evaporation.
- finish Metrology & Testing Interferometry, profilometry, spectrophotometry, MTF, and environmental — every part has a number behind it.
- manufacture Polymer Raw Materials PMMA, PC, COP/COC, OKP, Topas, polysulfone — selected and characterized for the optical envelope.
Send the part, the spectral target, and the environmental envelope.
We will return a stack proposal, a witness-sample plan, and a lead time you can put on the program schedule.