During my internship at Thorlabs I had two projects that I was involved in:

The first was the development of an automated quality control system. This system would reside within the clean room and would test laser chips before they're integrated into their housings. The previous system was only able to test one chip at a time and was the bottleneck in the manufacturing chain. The new system is able to test eight chips sequentially, increasing the rate at which components can be produced. The chips are tested for their output, both in terms of wavelength and power, and then automatically "binned" accordingly. This system consisted of precision mechanical actuators and camera systems for positioning the fibers used for reading out the chips.

 

The second project was to develop a jig that assists the "pigtailing" of fiber optic systems. This system would be automated, only requiring the worker to place the laser body and the fiber optics into the jig. It would then automatically place the components, solder the housing shut and test it for air -tightness. This system consisted of an inductive heating element for sealing the optical fiber elements to the nose of the housing, precision mechanical systems for the positions of the fibers, and a seam welder for placing the lid onto the laser housing after the fibers are positioned.

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Both of these systems were created with the goal of increasing the throughput of the clean room while still maintaining high quality standards. After implementation of these system the capacity of the clean room increased to over 1,000 laser systems per day from 200 without an increase in clean room size or personnel.

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Key skills demonstrated:

• The ability to design tooling and fixtures to optical tolerances 

• Accounting for thermal expansion in optical systems  

• State machine based programming of automated system