Optical coating is a process where products are coated with metals to reflect or refract light. Different materials and processes can be used to achieve the desired effect. Optical Coating Labs Inc. was a successful company in the 1970s, but was later bought by JDS Uniphase and dismantled, resulting in job losses. Much of the optical coating work has since moved overseas, but American consultants may still be needed for machine maintenance.
Optical coating or thin film coating is a manufacturing process in which products such as glasses, mirrors, computer screens and fiber optic parts are coated with metals. Optical coating gives products the ability to reflect light in different ways, unlike uncoated products. The coating is usually done using machines operated by technicians, who program or supervise the machine’s processes. Some machines perform automated processes that do not need close supervision.
There are different types of requests for optical coating. In some cases, such as with mirrors, the desired effect is to produce a product with a high degree of light reflection. By choosing materials with opposite levels of refraction and stacking them, you increase the reflection in the finished product. For inexpensive mirrors, a typical optical coating material would be aluminum coating the glass. More expensive coatings, such as silver, which result in more expensive mirrors, are higher quality because they reflect more light.
In the case of lenses used for microscopes or cameras, the optical coating is used to refract light, rather than reflect it. This is called a dielectric coating and its use is not only for consumers but also for scientific devices such as telescopes and lasers. Layers of metals such as magnesium and fluoride are deposited on objects requiring coating (called a substrate), and levels of reflection or refraction can be titrated depending on the number and thickness of the layers, the type of materials and the coating processes used.
One of the more productive companies that used optical coating to great advantage was California-based Optical Coating Labs Incorporated, which became a major employer in the then relatively small city of Santa Rosa in the 1970s. They designed products such as non-reflective computer screens, windows for the Space Shuttle and mirrors for the Chandra X-ray telescope.
The company’s growing capability and innovation interested the larger company, JDS Uniphase, which later bought the company in the late 1990s. While this move seemed to portend an even greater ability for the company to ramp up production, it ended up dismantling virtually the entire optical coating operation. This years-long decline in productivity has resulted in the loss of jobs of around 1,000 people.
The company’s downfall coincided with the telecommunications crash, as much of the work done at JDS Uniphase during this period was on fiber optic components. Since then, much of the optical coating work has moved overseas. There are some companies in the US with small operations dedicated to coating some specific products. However, startups are prone to a high failure rate and many of the older machines are now being sold to foreign countries like India or China. It is thought that the production of optical coatings will only be effective if the new foreign companies employ American consultants to fix the machines when they have problems, since this technology has been used and patented mainly in the United States.
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