Facilities

Light Coatings have specialist facilities for the design, manufacture and analysis of a range of thin film coatings along with prototyping facilities to support rapid development at the systems level where required.

Thin Film Coatings

Our primary coating method is through Reactive Magnetron Sputtering of which we specialise in small batch production for prototyping and small volumes/components but with techniques which we can take to larger scale production within our own or other facilities. Our automated system can produce multilayer coatings with nm level precision and to date we have performed coatings exceeding 160 discrete layers in a single cycle.

We have a range of coating materials available including;

- Oxides (SiO2, ZrO2, TiO2, VO2, Al2O3)

- Nitrides (Si3N4, ZrN, TiN, Al3N4, CrN)

- Metals (Al, Ag, Cu, Stainless Steel, Ni, Cr)

- Others (DLC, Me:DLC, HMDSO, Carbides, ITO)

We also undertake materials development for new materials which we can conduct within our equipment very quickly but within a system which can be directly taken to industrialisation compared to a research system.

ISO 5 Clean Room

As part of our ongoing quality assurance we have the Clean Environments, fully portable, inflatable class 5 clean room with HEPA filtration. This provides a dust free environment for the most demanding of customer applications. With the portable approach we gain in flexibility without the requirement and cost of a permanent clean room.

Formlabs 3 3D Printer

Light Coatings have recently brought in house SLA 3D printing capabilities to support not only our internal tooling and prototyping capability but to develop our ability to print and coat final products for customers with specialist requirements. We have stock formlabs resins available and can design and print components at a lead time much faster than an equivalent aluminium or metal component.

Analysis Techniques

To support our coating activities and consultancy offering we have a range of test and analsyis methods available including;

- Spectrophotometers (UV - NIR and MIR - FIR)

- Adhesion and Durability Testing to various standards

- SEM Analysis

- XRF

- XRD

Beyond this testing we have direct access to a significant range of test facilities through our various partners.

Cleaning Facilities

Utilising an ultrasonic cleaning process we ensure the cleanliness of customer substrates, essential prior to coating. Two separate cleaning stages ensure no cross contamination occurs.