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06 September 2007
Industry Newsmakers - Summer 2007
Industry Newsmakers
Summer 2007
The following is a corporate news roundup from the Optical Society of America (OSA). This quarterly gathering of industry news is a complimentary service offered by the OSA PR team.
For more information on these or other OSA corporate members making news, please contact Lyndsay Meyer at lmeyer@osa.org or 202.416.1435.
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OSA CORPORATE MEMBERS Aculight Corp. – Aculight to help ready solid-state lasers for military and aerospace applications Corning, Inc. – Corning Announces Breakthrough Optical Fiber Technology Luna Technologies -- Luna's Test and Measurement Instrument Receives ''R&D 100'' Award for Technical Innovation Melles Griot, Inc. -- Yellow and Blue Solid-State Lasers with Fiber Beam Delivery Nufern – Nufern Releases Fully Functional 200W Fiber Laser Designed to be Industry's Most Flexible and Accessible Ocean Optics – Ocean Optics Spectrometer Selected for NASA LCROSS Mission to Search Out Lunar Water Raydiance, Inc. – Raydiance and Food & Drug Administration Sign Cooperative Research and Development Agreement Timbercon, Inc. – Timbercon Ranks 35th on the Portland Business Journal's Fastest Growing Private Companies for 2007 |
Summer 2007 Industry News Summary
The U.S. Federal Government relies on collaborations with innovative companies – often in the optics & photonics industry – to carry out important programs and missions. For example, Aculight Corp. won a three-year subcontract to help prepare optically pumped semiconductor laser technology for volume manufacturing in military and commercial aircraft applications. The technology is for aircraft infrared countermeasures defensive systems that can help protect military and commercial aircraft from heat-seeking missiles. Ocean Optics has custom-engineered a spectrometer for an upcoming NASA mission to the moon’s south pole. The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will carry the Ocean Optics equipment, affectionately dubbed “ALICE,” to help analyze the makeup of the lunar craters, with the goal of locating water below the moon’s surface. Raydiance, Inc. has entered into a two-year cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in which the FDA will utilize Raydiance's USP laser platform to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of high power laser-tissue interaction.
Industry leaders continue to make advances in the latest optical technologies. Corning, Inc. developed a breakthrough optical fiber-based technology that solves a historic technical challenge for telecommunications carriers installing FTTH networks. The new optical fiber maintains its signal strength when bent or curved, with performance results 100 times better than standard single-mode fibers. Fiber manufacturer Nufern released its first complete, fully functional industrial fiber laser this summer. The NuFIRE™ laser is a complete, high-performance 200 W ytterbium fiber laser system that Nufern expects to "streamline the process of adopting laser-based materials processing in manufacturing environments." Melles Griot, a global supplier of photonics components and subsystems, announced two new families of fiber delivered, solid-state lasers to facilitate system assembly and provide more system architecture options — the 85 BCF series operating at 488 nm (blue) and the 85 YCF series operating at 561 nm (yellow). The company notes these systems are excellent alternatives to gas lasers.
OSA Corporate Member companies continue to receive industry recognition for their leadership in the field. Luna Technologies' Optical Backscatter Reflectometer with distributed sensing has received a 2007 R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine as one of the 100 most technologically significant new products introduced into the marketplace in the last year. The R&D 100 Awards recognize breakthrough products or processes that can change or improve people's lives or standard of living, promote good health or clean up the environment. Timbercon, an industry leader in the supply and manufacturing of custom fiber optic products and solutions, ranks on the Portland Business Journal's 2007 list of fastest growing 100 privately held companies list, for the sixth consecutive year. Timbercon's 134% jump in revenues led the company to rank 35th in the top 100.
