Milestones

Guernsey Coating Laboratories (GCL) is celebrating 30 years in the photonics industry as a manufacturer of vacuum-deposited optical coatings. With the aim to improve the performance of thin films, Peter Guernsey began operations in 1982. In 1984, GCL moved to Ventura, Calif., expanding its facility from a one-chamber shop to a manufacturing plant. The company uses resistance source thermal deposition, electron beam, ion-assisted electron beam and ion beam sputtering techniques to deliver coatings that cover the wavelength spectrum from ultraviolet to the near-infrared.

VRmagic GmbH of Mannheim, Germany, is celebrating 10 years of supplying cameras and image processing components for industrial and scientific applications. The company established itself in the image processing market with the introduction of a USB 2.0 camera developed for the tracking system of the intraocular surgery simulator Eyesi Surgical. “With the VRmC-3, we were the first to combine CMOS sensor and USB 2.0 for applications in industry and medicine,” said Managing Director Dr. Markus Schill. “In 2008, VRmagic developed a multisensor camera with four pixel-synchronous sensors, and, recently, it released the D3 camera platform with increased performance and a higher storage capacity.

The Russian company Photonics, financed by Maxwell Biotech Venture Fund and RVC Seed Fund, sold its first stLase laser system to the global market, under the brand name Alta. Photonics developed stLase with Massachusetts-based Dental Photonics Inc., which is commercializing the product and planning to sell the systems in South Korea pending local regulatory approval. More than a dozen orders for laser systems have been placed in the US and Japan since early last year. The compact stLase system is designed for soft-tissue treatments and procedures. It can be used in cardiovascular, obstetric, ENT, proctology and gynecology surgeries as well as other medical fields.