Available in a variety of sizes and configurations, linear stages can adapt to diverse experimental setups. Whether you need a compact stage for confined spaces or a long-travel stage for extended movements, there are options tailored to meet your specific needs. Many linear stages feature modular designs that facilitate easy integration with other equipment, enhancing their versatility and functionality.

Choose the right-sized, right-priced system that deposits functional and durable/decorative coatings to meet your needs.

There’s a great deal of variation among brands, but all VaporTech® DLC coating machines give you PVD and DLC coating options at the click of the (recipe) button.

A linear stage can significantly speed up your workflow, especially for repetitive tasks. Its smooth and controlled movement eliminates the need for manual adjustments, saving both time and effort. Additionally, the ability to pre-program movements and positions ensures that experimental procedures remain consistent and efficient, further enhancing productivity and reliability.

Delaystage

DLC coating is excellent at coating exterior product surfaces, and some internal dimensions can be coated. But DLC has limitations and can’t be used to coat deep recesses like the inside of tubes.

A linear stage excels in performing repetitive tasks or complex movement patterns with exceptional accuracy and reliability across various applications. This is particularly crucial in scenarios where even minor positioning errors can impact data integrity.

NewportStage

The benefits of a linear stage are evident when tasks require precision, stability, flexibility, and automation. To determine if the investment is valuable for your work, evaluate your specific requirements, experimental goals, and budget. This assessment will help you understand how a precision linear stage can enhance your operations and contribute to achieving reliable and accurate results.

Although performance DLC coating applications such as engine parts or cutting tools are better-known, decorative DLC coatings are now popular with consumers in products ranging from watches to vehicle trim.

Pi air bearing stages

Choose the right-sized, right-priced system that deposits functional and durable/decorative coatings to meet your needs.

Physik Instrumente

Once we set a recipe, color variations are so slight that the naked eye can’t distinguish within-run and run-to-run variations.

DLC coating cost varies greatly depending on whether you use a coating service or bring a DLC coating machine in-house. DLC coating costs approximately $20 per part when using a coating service. This option makes sense if you DLC coat a low volume of parts. However, running your DLC coating machine in-house brings per-part coating costs down, sometimes to less than $1 per part.

VaporTech® coatings enhance your product’s look, functionality, and durability with a rainbow of PVD colors and performance coatings for functional applications.

Precision Linear stages provide highly precise, accurate, and repeatable motion, which is challenging to achieve without the right setup. This is essential for tasks where even slight positioning errors can jeopardize data quality. The high precision offered by a linear stage significantly enhances both the quality and reliability of your results.

Typical DLC coating temperatures range from 100-250 C. Our DLC coating machines run in the 150-200 C range. Above those temperatures, the DLC coating may not form properly. The DLC coating thickness required to achieve opaque finishes makes maintaining part temperatures <125C challenging.

Pi piezostage

Our systems run the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE-CVD) process that creates DLC coatings via a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process. Our hybrid VT-1500i™ system adds sputtering capability for metal-doped DLC coatings. For example, adding tungsten creates the VaporTech® W-DLC finish.

Tip Tiltstage

PI XYstage

In many scenarios, repeatability is a key factor to ensure that tasks can be performed consistently with a high degree of accuracy each time. This is particularly vital in manufacturing, where consistent results are crucial for maintaining product quality and optimizing yield.

PIStage

Designed for stability and rigidity, linear stages effectively minimize vibrations and unwanted movement. For instruments or experiments sensitive to motion, maintaining stability is paramount to ensure that your setup remains steady and undisturbed during measurements or observations, providing the reliability needed for accurate and consistent results.

VaporTech® coatings enhance your product’s look, functionality, and durability with a rainbow of PVD colors and performance coatings for functional applications.

Unlike color PVD coatings, DLC coatings come in shades rather than colors, ranging from grays to gorgeous dark graphite. Customers deposit dark black finishes via a PVD rather than a DLC coating process, but consumers love the look of black DLC coating. Darker DLC coatings are as durable as metallic PVD coatings and retain a low coefficient of friction.

Automation enhances precision, reduces human error, and ensures efficient and reproducible experiments. For applications involving repetitive tasks or complex movement sequences, a linear stage can execute these tasks with high precision and consistency. In manufacturing, this automation is particularly valuable as it boosts productivity and reduces labor costs by streamlining processes and minimizing the need for manual intervention.

PVD coating comes in a wide range of natural metallic and other colors. DLC coating is limited to grays and blacks, providing the distinct DLC coating look consumers love. DLC coating must also be deposited at a somewhat higher thickness as it is a semi-transparent coating at thinner deposition levels.

DLC is a semi-transparent coating. Therefore, DLC coating thickness determines the color of the DLC coating. For our standard applications, PVD coatings are thinner than 1 micron. DLC coating thickness is typically ≥1 micron, the point where the coating becomes opaque.

Precision and accuracy are fundamental in any scientific experiment or measurement. Whether you’re engaged in microscopy, spectroscopy, or metrology, a linear stage becomes an indispensable tool by offering controlled, precise motion for accurate positioning of samples and equipment. The decision to invest should be driven by the specific needs of your application and the level of precision required to achieve dependable results.

DLC can coat most conductive metals. Substrate hardness and surface finish influence the durability of the coating. For hardness, a good analogy is ice on water: the chance of breakthrough decreases as the ice (i.e., hard coating) thickens over the softer water (i.e., substrate). Alternatively, as the substrate hardens, so does the “composite hardness” of the substrate and coating. This result applies to all thin films, including DLC coating and conventional PVD finishes. The base material strongly influences durability and varies with the end-use.

As your research evolves, a versatile linear stage offers the flexibility to adapt and expand your capabilities with ease. Supporting automation and precision, linear stages facilitate scalability across various applications. As industries advance, these stages can be integrated into larger and more complex systems, driving productivity and innovation. Whether in semiconductor manufacturing, digital scanning, or instrumentation, linear stages provide a critical foundation for growth and progress.

DLC means diamond-like carbon coatings. Decorative DLC coating means applying these durable, aesthetically pleasing coatings for durable-decorative use rather than their more common use for performance coatings.