Building on our nearly 50 years of expertise in processing a variety of materials to ultra thin thicknesses, Valley Design has leveraged this knowledge to push new limits in ultra thin processing, polishing some materials to as thin as 10 microns.

Fused Silica& Fused Quartz Optical Glass Ceramics Sapphire Colored Filter Glass 96% Alumina &99.6% Alumina Aluminum Nitride Ferrites Macor Molybdenum Metals Germanium Silicon Silicon Carbide (SiC) Silicon-Silicon Carbide (SiSic)

Known for thermal stability, chemical resistance and good mechanical properties, polyimide plastic is an extremely flexible material best used in insulation. Valley Design expertly fabricates high-quality polyimide plastic products for a variety of industries include the automobile and air filter manufacturing industries.

Valley Design understands the importance of precision in microelectronic devices substrates. In our nearly 50 years of experience, we’ve delivered a multitude of important semiconductor materials for electronics, and we’re pleased to include 450-mm silicon wafers. We offer 300mm and 450mm diameter wafer back grinding, lapping and polishing services on a wide variety of materials such as ceramics, glass, Fused Silica and Sapphire.

In prac­tice, pho­tog­ra­phy is a two-dimen­sion­al medi­um that projects light onto a flat image sen­sor for record­ing. The posi­tion of the image sensor’s sur­face deter­mines the focal plane. When rays of light from a sub­ject point con­verge to a point on the focal plane, they’re con­sid­ered in focus. A sub­ject point that’s in focus is sit­u­at­ed along an imag­i­nary two-dimen­sion­al plane, known as the plane of focus, which rep­re­sents the the­o­ret­i­cal plane of crit­i­cal focus. [The plane of focus is par­al­lel to the image sen­sor and per­pen­dic­u­lar to the opti­cal axis.] Focus­ing the lens adjusts its dis­tance to the image sen­sor and shifts the plane of focus either toward or away from the cam­era in object space.

Email: info@valleydesign.com Phone: 831.420.0595 Fax: 831.420.0592

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Valley Design is a high precision CNC machining company, focusing on rapid, high quality on-demand 3, 4 and 5 axis CNC machining services. Our CNC department provides full CNC machining services from custom prototyping to full production manufacturing on a wide variety of hard and soft materials. Materials CNC machined include Alumina ceramics, Aluminum Nitride, Fused Silica, Glass, Sapphire, Silicon Carbide SiC, and Silicon Silicon-Carbide SiSiC. Our custom CNC machining capabilities combined with 50 years of diamond tool and fixturing expertise make us the industry standard for excellence, quality and precision for complex CNC machined components.

The hyper­fo­cal dis­tance is the clos­est focus dis­tance at which the depth of  field’s far lim­it of accept­able sharp­ness aligns with infin­i­ty. When a lens is focused to the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance, its near lim­it of accept­able sharp­ness will reside at half that dis­tance to the cam­era. If your lens has the depth of field scale, the sim­plest method for focus­ing to the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance is by rotat­ing the focus ring until the line cor­re­spond­ing to your f‑stop’s far lim­it of accept­able sharp­ness aligns with the infin­i­ty mark.

Aper­ture. An essen­tial prop­er­ty of all lens­es is that chang­ing the aperture’s diam­e­ter when adjust­ing expo­sure also affects the depth of field. Increas­ing the aper­ture diam­e­ter results in less depth of field and decreas­ing the aper­ture diam­e­ter results in more depth of field. Keep in mind that effects of dif­frac­tion still apply, and it may not be prac­ti­cal to use the small­est aper­ture diam­e­ter pos­si­ble in all sit­u­a­tions (see Reci­procity Law).

Valley Design manufactures standard and custom sized substrates, wafers, discs, windows and flat optics of all types of materials, many from stock. We manufacture precision shims, spacers, washers, submounts and rings, which can be sequentially spaced to < ¼ micron, flat to 1/10 wave, lapped or polished. SEMI standard dummy wafers up to 450mm diameter, prisms, wedges, beamsplitters, flat lenses, etalons and color glass filters are all produced by Valley Design. We also offer large geometry ceramics, wafer and vacuum chucks and polished Aluminum mirrors.

Glass wafers and glass substrates as well as Fused Silica, Fused Quartz, Soda Lime Glass, AF45, BK7, B270, Borofloat 33, D263, Gorilla Glass, Eagle XG Glass, Borosilicate glass, and other materials such as 99.6% and 96% Alumina, Sapphire and Aluminum Nitride, are available to SEMI specifications in sizes ranging from 50mm (2″) up to 450mm (17.7″). These SEMI standard wafers can also be fabricated with a SEMI notch or one or two SEMI flats.

96% Alumina and 99.6% Alumina substrates and wafers are stocked and processed by Valley Design. 99.6% Alumina Al203 substrates are typically referred to as thin film substrates and are manufactured using tape cast or pressed methods. This material comes As-Fired .005” – .080” thick, and then is lapped and/or polished by Valley Design into any custom thickness specified. 96% Alumina substrates are typically referred to as thick film substrates, and are used for high power electronic and RF Microwave applications. A previous project involved lapping 1000’s of 96% Alumina substrates 4” square to 75um thick.

For nearly 50 years, Valley Design has served as a valuable technical resource to its customers on Research & Development projects and provided technical support to the leading research institutions and labs worldwide. These include such distinguished technology centers as Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Los Almos National Lab, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Sandia National Lab, Army Research Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Rutherford Appleton Lab (UK) and Max Planck Institute (Germany).

Some lens­es have a depth of field scale print­ed direct­ly on their bar­rels or under a trans­par­ent plas­tic win­dow. The depth of field scale con­sists of sev­er­al pairs of num­bers on either side of the dis­tance index, with each pair rep­re­sent­ing an f‑stop of cor­re­spond­ing val­ue. When the aper­ture is set to one of the f‑stops indi­cat­ed on the scale, the range on the dis­tance scale that lies between this pair is con­sid­ered the depth of field. The f‑stop lines on the far side of the focus index rep­re­sent the far lim­its of accept­able focus and the lines on the near side of the focus index rep­re­sent the near lim­its of accept­able focus.

Fused Silica and Fused Quartz polished wafers, windows, substrates, plates and discs are available from Valley Design. We offer polished optical surface finishes to 10/5 scratch/dig < 7 Angstroms. Custom sizes can be shipped in just a few days. Many standard sized wafers and windows are in stock and available for immediate shipment. Along with SEMI standard wafer sizes, we specialize in ultra-thin, as thin as 10-15um.

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Since 1975, Valley Design has been recognized as an industry leader in advanced materials processing as providers of precision lapping and polishing services, 4 & 5 axis CNC machining, dicing, backgrinding, hole drilling, and other precision machining services on a wide variety of both hard and soft materials.

Building on our nearly 50 years of expertise in processing a variety of materials to ultra-thin thicknesses, Valley Design has leveraged this knowledge to push new limits in ultra-thin processing, polishing materials to as thin as 10 -15 microns. Materials that can be polished to these ultra-thin thicknesses include Fused Silica and Fused Quartz. Glass, BK7, Alumina ceramics and Silicon can be thinned and polished to 15-20um thick.

For any giv­en cam­era, the fac­tors in deter­min­ing hyper­fo­cal dis­tance are the lens focal length and aper­ture size. Adjust­ments to the aper­ture will change the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance: a larg­er aper­ture diam­e­ter will pro­duce a hyper­fo­cal dis­tance that is far­ther out and a small­er aper­ture diam­e­ter will move the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance clos­er to the cam­era. Sim­i­lar­ly, a longer focal length will increase your hyper­fo­cal dis­tance while a short­er focal length will bring it clos­er. Since the hyper­fo­cal dis­tance describes the dis­tance to which your lens must be focused, sub­ject dis­tance isn’t a fac­tor.

Crit­i­cal focus may only be achieved at pre­cise­ly one plane of focus. All sub­ject points that align with this plane will also be in sharp focus (assum­ing your lens does­n’t exhib­it cur­va­ture of field); any devi­a­tion from this plane results in pro­gres­sive defo­cus­ing since the light rays no longer con­verge at the focal plane. Nev­er­the­less, in prac­tice, there’s an area just ahead of and behind the plane of focus that will be ren­dered as accept­ably sharp in the pho­to­graph because the devi­a­tions from absolute con­ver­gence are too small to notice. The depth of field describes the total region sur­round­ing the plane of focus in which objects are ren­dered as accept­ably sharp accord­ing to the sub­jec­tive stan­dards estab­lished for a par­tic­u­lar pho­to­graph.

Depth of fieldsimulator

Our capabilities in providing precision machining services make us a world-leading company in precision materials engineering and manufacturing. For nearly 50 years, our services have grown and evolved with the changing trends in precision material engineering and manufacturing. Our in-depth experience with components needed in the manufacturing of electro-static chucks (ESD) for the semiconductor industry, combined with our 3, 4 and 5 axis CNC machining services put Valley Design at the cutting edge of technology. We also offer CNC hole drilling, optical edge polishing services and small diameter core drilling. Basic optical coating services are also offered by Valley Design.

Polished colored filter glass can be used in place of thin-film coated filters as an economical alternative. Color glass filters in standard and custom sizes are now available optically polished from high quality optical glass from Valley Design. Color Filter Glass components are available from as small as .127mm square up to 300mm, and thickness from as thin as 75um up to 10.0mm thick. Please click here for equivalent color filter glass types cross-referenced to Schott and Hoya.

Light from any point in object space emerges from the rear ele­ment of a lens as a cone. When a sub­ject point is in focus, the apex of its light cone coin­cides with the focal plane, which forms an image point in the pho­to­graph. If the sub­ject point does­n’t come into per­fect focus on the image sen­sor, it cre­ates a small blurred cir­cle called a cir­cle of con­fu­sion. The three fac­tors that con­trol the depth of field—the aper­ture, focal length, and sub­ject distance—do so by vary­ing the size of the blur cir­cles. The diam­e­ter of the cir­cle of con­fu­sion with the res­o­lu­tion of the image sen­sor is used to cal­cu­late the depth of field.

The chemical composition of Optical Glass is designed to selectively transmit or block different wavelengths of light in the optical light spectrum, from UV Ultraviolet, to Visible light, to IR Infrared light. Valley Design laps, polishes , dices and CNC machines optical glass of all types, and works with the premier optical glass manufacturers such as Corning, Schott, and Hoya. Optical glass is used every day by consumers, for vision, magnification, telephotography, science research and more which is why precision and quality is key for optical glass suppliers such as Valley Design.

Sub­ject dis­tance. As the sub­ject (on which you’re focused) moves pro­gres­sive­ly clos­er to the cam­era, the depth of field decreas­es.

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It’s impor­tant to under­stand that the depth of field is a the­o­ret­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion that does­n’t take into account lens aber­ra­tions, light dif­frac­tion, and post-cap­ture manip­u­la­tions such as sharp­en­ing and crop­ping.

Pho­tog­ra­phers exploit the depth of field all of the time to achieve effects such as deep or shal­low focus. Deep focus pho­tog­ra­phy relies on a con­sid­er­able depth of field to achieve accept­able sharp­ness in the fore­ground, mid­dle-ground, and back­ground of the pic­ture. This effect is often asso­ci­at­ed with land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy (where much of the image appears in sharp focus) and some forms of street pho­tog­ra­phy. Shal­low focus pho­tog­ra­phy fea­tures a nar­row or small depth of field, which is char­ac­ter­ized by a sharply focused sub­ject and an out of focus, or blurred, back­ground and fore­ground. This tech­nique is fre­quent­ly used by por­trait photographers—especially those work­ing on loca­tion as opposed to in studio—because it visu­al­ly sep­a­rates the sub­ject from the scene. Bokeh describes the aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty and char­ac­ter of how lens­es ren­der the out of focus ele­ments in a pic­ture.

Aluminum Nitride Ceramic is the perfect material choice when high thermal conductivity and electrical insulation properties are needed. Aluminum Nitride has a combination of high dielectric strengthening, high electrical insulation properties, and low thermal expansion. Valley Design supplies Aluminum Nitride with thermal conductivity of 170 W/mK, 180 W/mK, 200 W/mK and 230 W/mK. AlN Aluminum Nitride is optimal for hybrid, power and microwave electronics applications where an electrically insulating nontoxic substrate material is required. It is the ideal material for a wide variety of uses in the growing Semiconductor, Aerospace, Defense and Medical Industries.

An Optical Transmission Curve is a graph that shows an optical medium plotted against the wavelength. The graph describes the transmission fraction of an optical filter as a function of wavelength. These transmission curves can be used by optical designers and engineers to determine the most suitable material to use for their applications.

The depth of field is com­mon­ly expressed using units of length. The sub­ject dis­tance is mea­sured from the focal plane of the cam­era (whose posi­tion is indi­cat­ed on top of your cam­era with the focal plane indi­ca­tor, ɸ) to the point in object space on which the lens is focused. The total depth of field is the entire range of accept­able focus. it’s mea­sured from the near lim­it of accept­able focus, which lies between the cam­era and sub­ject, and the far lim­it of accept­able focus, which lies between the sub­ject and infin­i­ty.

There’s no tru­ly objec­tive mea­sure for what qual­i­fies as an accept­able degree of sharp­ness con­cern­ing the depth of field. A pho­to­graph that looks ade­quate­ly sharp when enlarged to fit a 15-inch note­book dis­play may appear slight­ly unsharp when expand­ed to a 30-inch desk­top dis­play. A 24×36 inch print may look sharp from across the room, less sharp from a com­fort­able read­ing dis­tance, and down­right blur­ry from the tip of your nose.

Valley Design laps, polishes and CNC machines a wide variety of metals and alloys including Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Copper, Hastalloy, Brass, Inconnel, Titanium, Steel Alloys, Low Carbon Steel, Tool Steel, Tungsten Carbide, Invar, Bronze, Kovar and Cast Iron Zinc. Mirror surface finishes as good as < 10 Angstroms are achievable on some metal materials.

Valley Design provides lapping and polishing services of flat mechanical seals, pump parts, valve seats and discs. Valve components made from a large variety of materials include Hastelloy, Inconel, Monel, Stainless Steel, Carbon Steel, Copper, Nickel, Ceramics, Glass, Sapphire, Macor and many exotic materials. We have even polished large wind tunnels for NASA.

Focal length. Lens focal length is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in man­ag­ing the depth of field. Short focal length lens­es pro­duce greater depth of field, while long focal length lens­es pro­duce shal­low depth of field.

In 1975, Valley Design began polishing 2” diameter Silicon wafers, then continually expanded our polishing capabilities in keeping with the Semiconductor Industry to 3” diameter, then 100mm, 125mm, 150mm, 200mm eventually landing at 300mm diameter. Looking forward, the Semiconductor industry contemplated transitioning lithography fabs to 450mm, but it was not generally accepted by the equipment manufacturers. Valley Design has performed back grinding and lapping of 450mm diameter Silicon wafers, and also routinely laps, polishes, dices and CNC machines Silicon in all sizes. Ultra-thin is also available as thin as 20um thick.

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Precision shims spacer and submount components from Valley Design with accurate pitch tolerances and sequentially spaced to less than 1/4 micron, flat to less than 1/10 wave, with lapped or polished mirror finishes available.

Valley Design produces and stocks wafers and substrates of Fused Silica and Fused Quartz as large as 300mm diameter to 1cm square to as thin as 10-15um thick. Advantages of Fused Silica and Fused Quartz include low thermal expansion, resistance to thermal shock, superior electrical insulation, high transparency from the Ultraviolet light spectrum to the Infrared range, high softening temperature and thermal resistance. Valley Design has thousands of finished Fused Silica wafers available from stock. Single Crystal Quartz is also available lapped, polished, diced and CNC machined.

In pho­tog­ra­phy, space ahead of a lens is known as object space, while space behind is called the image space. In the­o­ry, rays of light from any point in object space should con­verge, or focus, at some point behind the lens. As the dis­tance between the lens and sub­ject changes, the dis­tance behind the lens at which the sub­ject is focused also changes. A sub­ject far­ther from the cam­era will focus clos­er behind the lens than a near­by sub­ject. [This is why macro lens­es are capa­ble of such a long exten­sion: to bring very close objects into focus.]

CVD Silicon Carbide theoretically dense and intrinsically pure, is available as lapped or polished substrates and wafers from 2″ diameter up to 300mm diameter with surface finishes to better than 10 angstroms, while maintaining a 1/4 wave flatness depending on thickness and size.

Patented, our new non-contact interferometer, the Indars Interferometer, is designed to alleviate the problems inherent with using optical flats or Fizeau interferometers as discussed above. The Indars Interferometer has been specifically optimized for the flatness characterization of thin, transparent wafers, substrates and windows. Its unique design allows wafers to be positioned vertically, eliminating most bending forces applied by gravity and without necessitating the application of flatness distorting films.

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Valley Design produces standard and custom lapped or polished Sapphire wafers in all common orientations including A, C and R-plane Sapphire. Valley also provides ultra-thin polished Sapphire substrates and wafers. The size of Sapphire that can be polished is limited only by the material availability. Sapphire blanks up to 12″ diameter can be lapped, optically polished, diced and CNC machined. Holding precise tolerances as well as flatness, and parallelism is critical for many applications.

Valley Design manufactures wafers, substrates and discs from all materials including Fused Silica, Glass of all types, Colored Filter Glass 96% Alumina, 99.6% Alumina and Aluminum Nitride ceramics, Sapphire, CVD Silicon Carbide SiC and metals including Stainless Steel. We provide wafers in SEMI standard sizes, as well as custom sizes, and have 1,000’s of finished wafers and substrates available from stock.

Valley Design proudly offers special capabilities to our CNC machining services such as ultra thinning to as thin as 10-15um, polishing to Angstrom level finishes, micron level tolerances and TTV (Total Thickness Variation) specifications. We process a wide variety of materials from our extensive inventory, as well as customer supplied materials. Commonly processed materials include ceramics of all types, 96% Alumina, 99.6% Alumina, Aluminum Nitride, Fused Silica, Glass, Sapphire, Macor, Silicon Carbide SiC, Silicon Silicon-Carbide SiSiC and many others.

At Valley Design, we are the experts in precision dicing. Our dicing services can cover all your needs from prototypes to production dicing services. With 15 K&S and DISCO dicing saws, we have one of the highest diamond dicing volume capacity in the industry. Silicon die from as small as .127mm square to Silicon stacks as high as 6.25mm can be diced, as well as a wide variety of hard materials including Fused Silica, Glass, Aluminum Nitride, Alumina ceramics, Sapphire, Silicon Carbide SiC, Silicon Silicon-Carbide (SiSiC) and many others.

Depth of field

Valley Design serves numerous high-tech industries including Semiconductor, Medical and Biomedical, Aerospace, Defense and Sensing, Photonics and Optics, Telecommunications, Lithography, along with Research and Development industries. Applications include Substrates, Wafers and Electro-optical and Micro-electronic components for sensors, integrated circuits, capacitors, semiconductors, optoelectronics, microfluidics, MEMS devices, Machine vision, Optical Switches, Electro static chucks (ESD) for ion implanters, and optical instrumentation.

Precision lapping and polishing services on all types of materials both hard and soft has been a specialty of Valley Design for nearly 50 years. We operate over 100 single and double sided lapping and polishing machines ranging in size from 12”,18”,24” 28”, 32” 36”48”and 64” diameters producing parts from as small as .127mm (.005”) sq. to 450mm diameter and larger. Depending on the material, lapped finishes can range from 10-25u” Ra. Polished surfaces on ceramics can range from 0.3 -3u” Ra, and optical finishes on fused silica and glass can be as good as 3A Ra.

Shallowdepth of field

Measuring flatness using an optical flat entails direct contact between the specimen to be measured and the optical flat itself. Holding the surface of a high precision optical flat against the test specimen under monochromatic light creates visible light bands, which are formed by the air gaps where the two surfaces are not in perfect contact. These interference fringes show the contour of the surface under test. The light and dark patterns visually represent the flatness of the surface being tested, and it is the curve and spacing between these fringes which indicate the surface accuracy.

Valley Design offers a wide variety of optically polished metal mirrors including Stainless Steel, Molybdenum, Brass, Copper and many other alloys. Surface roughness of < 10 Angstroms are possible on some materials. Metal chucks and vacuum chucks are lapped, polished and CNC machined to micron level tolerances.

Email: info@valleydesign.com Phone: 978.425.3030 Fax: 978.425.3031

As a leader in precision materials processing for nearly 50 years, Valley has extensive experience with a wide variety of materials. We process various semiconductor materials, optical materials and materials used in electro optics.