Custom Solutions

Heptagon's business model is built to supply clients with custom OEM solutions. When you engage Heptagon to meet your needs, we move your project quickly and meticulously from the feasibility study right through to volume manufacturing. We have an excellent track-record in custom OEM solutions, largely because we have all the capability in-house to carry a project through its four essential phases - Feasibility, Design, Prototyping, and Volume Production - providing our customers with fast time-to-market and minimal risk for new product launches.

Feasibility

We start every project by listening to the customer, to get the best possible understanding of their requirements, including desired functionality and performance, tolerances, size constraints, cost constraints, environmental requirements, and whatever other considerations are necessary to achieving the required product performance. Upon studying and discussing these requirements, Heptagon makes an initial assessment as to whether micro-optics is the best solution for the costumer's needs, and whether or not the performance and cost criteria can be met. If this assessment is positive, we move on to the design phase.

Design

Heptagon's design team is the world leader in micro-optics and diffractive optics design, with extensive experience in both refractive micro-optics and diffractive optics for a variety of applications. We have unparalleled expertise in designing micro-optic and diffractive optic structures for CMOS image sensing , LED and laser applications, powered by our own unique proprietary design software. A key advantage of this software is that we are able to take the properties and tolerances of our manufacturing processes into account when designing the micro-optic or diffractive optic components. This ensures that the components we design don't only meet the performance requirements in theory, but also in practice stand the test of high-volume manufacturing with high yield and at low cost.

Prototyping

Prototyping is an integral part of the design process. Typically, we produce a number of slightly differing prototypes to narrow in on the best design. These prototypes are then tested for performance and if necessary the design is adjusted until we have the optimal solution. We then deliver prototypes of this design to the customer.

We manufacture our prototypes using exactly the same processing and equipment we use for volume production. This ensures that the final product will be of exactly the same quality and performance as the prototype, and allows us to move quickly to volume production once the optimal design has been found.

Volume production

Once we have a prototype that meets all the customer's requirements, the transition to volume production is relatively easy. The key step involves producing a wafer-scale master (6" or 8") to maximize the number of elements that can be replicated at one time. Once this wafer-scale master is produced, we can produce low-cost high-quality tooling in volumes and each tool is used for replicating the components in mass using the exact same process that created the prototype. This way the customer can be sure that every part will be of the required quality and performance.

The other steps involved in moving to high-volume production include establishing production specifications, test procedures and customer acceptance criteria compatible with the customer's requirements and with the demands of high-throughput processing, as well as agreeing on packaging and delivery procedures.