General
Distant Focus has broad expertise in mechanical design and fabrication. Our mechanical engineers work closely with optical and electronic design teams to ensure that no part of the design is left to chance. Additionally, we have a close working relationship with a local machine shop with extensive capabilities such as 5-axis milling, wire EDM, and water jet cutting. We typically involve the shop from the beginning of the project to ensure your parts can be fabricated to the required precision and for a reasonable cost.
A 3D model of a camera housing we designed for a customer.
Examples
Our mechanical engineering projects usually support our optical or system integration projects but we have worked on a number of mechanical-only designs. For example, the camera enclosure shown to the right was designed in-house in collaboration with a third party responsible for the electronics. Many of our larger projects are team-based, involving collaboration of this kind.
Since a fair number of our projects center around optical systems, we have acquired skills in working with optical fabrication shops for diamond turning optical elements from various substrates. We have developed the capability to fabricate our own optical blanks from aluminum, including our own thermal stabilization process. We have fabricated aluminum blanks less than 25 mm in diameter and over 300 mm in diameter.
Stabilizing aluminum lens blanks using a proprietary thermal cycling process.
A set of injection molded parts we made for the AWARE project.
Distant Focus designs injection molded parts and works with mold tool makers to get parts made accurately the first time. We also work with Protomold which is an ideal option for low-quantity, fast-turnaround molded parts.
For other examples see the following projects:
Our Tools:
- Creo Parametric (Pro/Engineer)
- Solid Works
- MATLAB
- Stereo inspection microscopes
- Measuring tools: digital micrometers, calipers, force gauges, temperature monitoring, etc.
- Static controlled clean room and laminar flow bench assembly areas
- Optical table and breadboards for prototyping
- Precision flat work surfaces and optical flats for surface measurements
- UV Epoxy Cure Stations