Precision bonding

The assembly of optical components meets the highest standards of installation accuracy. Laser products have become an important part of many industrial, medical and consumer applications and their relevance will increase significantly in the coming years.

Particularly challenging in precision bonding are the dependencies between alignment and bonding. By combining our experience in machine vision, micro-positioning and robotics, we are able to produce systems for automated, high-precision bonding processes.

Case Study - Precision bonding - Industrie

About precision bonding in general 

Precision bonding involves aligning multiple components within very small spatial and angular tolerances, in the order of a few nm. One of the biggest challenges in bonding is the fact that the bonding process is irreversible. Thus, the first bonding attempt must be successful.

Today's UV-curing adhesives inherit shrinkage effects during curing, which can be harmful to nanometre tolerances and therefore make joining several components very delicate assembly work. However, shrinkage of UV-curing adhesives not only varies between different loads due to variations in raw materials, but also changes during the storage period. One answer to this special challenge can be the daily characterisation of the adhesive.

Characterisation before the adhesive is applied is required for precision optics assembly to achieve the highest output yields, minimum tolerances and ideal beam-shaping results. However, it is also often necessary to monitor the process during the bonding and curing process. This is where our many years of experience in machine vision comes into play. Robooptic Systems is able to record deviations down to the nanometre range and, thanks to our own micro-positioning processes.