Custom Pinholes, Apertures, Collimators and Air Slits
The Instrumentation market has demanded better diagnostic and imaging equipment as such new millennium opportunities such as Laser Fusion, Laser Spectroscopy and Life Science advancements enter the commercial mainstream. In these markets, scientists and engineers utilize lasers and other illumination sources to probe target areas in a non-contact, non-destructive manner to obtain such information as time-of-flight spectroscopy, fluorescence interpretative data or simply a more precise way to aperture, collimate or spatially filter an illumination source. Depending upon the application, the originating illumination source or the resulting optical feedback may or may not be coherent in nature. Therefore there is a trend towards the fabrication of specialty pinholes, air slits, collimators and spatial filters that may require high dimensional tolerances and repeatability or resolutions approaching the diffraction limit of the illumination source. To meet these needs, hybrid laser micromachining technology of metals known as PIVOTAL has been developed.
Improved leak test equipment sensitivity, increased market competition and potential legal fallouts are three reasons why calibrated leak holes in packages are getting smaller. Pharmaceutical, medical device and beverage packaging companies guarantee package sterility and integrity by asking their respective quality groups to perform destructive and non-destructive tests on their packages.
Excimer lasers are used to drill small holes in various types of plastic and metal packages such as metal containers from the beverage industry, foil packages from the medical device industry or blister packs and plastic ampoules from the pharmaceutical industry. All three industries have different requirements; yet all share a converging leak test requirement. All three industries are demanding that their packages are drilled with smaller holes, with capabilities approaching hole diameters as small as 5 micron with diameter tolerances of +/- 1 micron.
Leak Testing
Leak Test Equipment equipment manufacturers have kept up with the market's needs by improving such methods as force and pressure decay, helium leak testing, mass flow test and acoustic micro imaging, among others.
Pressure decay technique is a differential method involving the measurement of the pressure of an inflated test part. After a certain time, the pressure is re-measured to calculate the leak rate.
Mass flow leak detector is a single point measurement technique that measures the leak rate by measuring the inlet air flow required to keep the test part at equal pressure.
Helium leak testing or helium mass spectrometry is the most sensitive leak testing method, capable of detecting a leak rate of 5 x 10-12 atm cm3/sec, corresponding to a hole diameter of 100 angstroms (.01 micron)! Acoustic micro imaging equipment (AMI) is a non-destructive method that uses ultrasound to detects leak hole diameters as small as 5 microns.
Resonetics uses excimer lasers to drill small holes into various packages and lids to allow the Quality Departments of various industries to test the on-line leak testing equipment. By intentionally introducing small holes (as small as a few microns in diameter) in designated locations, Quality engineers can verify the performance of their in-line metrology equipment to guarantee product or packaging performance.
In the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, packaging such blister packs, pouches and plastic ampoules are laser-drilled.
Metal lids are laser-drilled for the food and beverage industry.
