Near the end of our Omnica facility tour video (on our web site), Andy Scherer says “It’s just great fun. All the best tools in our garage and we get to play at the things we like.” The flipside is not so much fun, that is, when the right tools aren’t available. Anxious customers would undoubtedly share the sentiment. We try to satisfy everyone by adding equipment that expedites our job, and in turn, speeds the prototyping process. This is another way we can shave days and sometimes weeks from a development effort.

55 watt laser is a precision industrial instrument  

Our prototyping team now has access to a Piccolaser, 55 watt laser welder. It’s a specialty tool that can weld stainless, aluminum, titanium, and other materials that are tough to join. 

The solid state laser is commonly used in the auto, jewelry, dental, and aerospace industries. It is particularly useful for welding thin materials without overheating or significantly affecting their molecular structure. Another benefit, especially for the medical industry is that post processing is reduced to a minimum. With a 0.2mm focus diameter and precision up to 0.002 inches, we can join extremely small parts and still attain uncolored and undistorted welded and polished surfaces.

Henry Hsu and Larry Hood are obviously enjoying themselves. Henry is welding a surgical handpiece tip (shown below) while Larry measures some finished parts on our optical comparator. 

No more waiting for vendors to turn around our tiny welded parts. 

The laser welder allows us to fabricate parts (a surgical handpiece tip, for instance) that in the past, would have been sent to a niche service bureau for completion. For our customers it means faster product development time. We can make adjustments to small parts on the fly. Testing alternate design configurations is more enterprising when we don’t wait on outside vendors to turn these types of jobs around. Indeed, everyone here including our customers, continue to have fun.

To learn more about our capabilities, and what we can do for you, visit www.omnica.com