Optica Corporate Member Profile: PowerPhotonic
Samantha Hornback, Research & Program Development Coordinator, Optica
PowerPhotonic is a leading manufacturer of precision micro-optics products. Based in Dalgety Bay, it combines specialized design and manufacturing technologies to increase laser efficiency. Optica sat down with co-founder and Managing Director Roy McBride to learn more about the company.
What does PowerPhotonic offer, and what markets does it serve?
We design and manufacture wafer-scale optics, which transform the performance of our customers' laser systems. Our main markets are defense, industrial laser material processing, and biomedical systems. We also serve telecom, laser projection display, and projects in big science. Within those markets, our customers are original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) making high-performance lasers and high-performance laser systems. Our optic collimates an array of beams from fiber lasers or diodes lasers; it transforms those beams and shapes them. The aim of our optics is to make the customers' laser more effective and the end user's process easier.
The optics we make also withstand very high power—commonly tens of kilowatts, sometimes much more—though they get used in low-power applications and milliwatt applications as well. The unique aspect of our manufacturing process is that it produces a very damage-resistant surface. Our optics are very efficient and great at handling CW and high-power applications. It's all about getting very high performance out of a laser beam.
Where do you expect PowerPhotonic to be in the next ten years?
My initial answer would be, "A lot bigger!" We're about 40 staff now, so I'd expect us to be about 100 staff by then. We'd also like to increase our target markets to expand our reach. We will look to increase the value we offer to our customers by focusing on the functionality we deliver and growing our range of products. Also, we want to extend the range of manufacturing technologies that we utilize. Right now, we've got some solid niches, but I'd like to broaden those and be the go-to provider of beam shaping optics, ray collimation optics and wafer-scale optics for high-performance systems in all the markets that we choose to serve. By then we will also be providing prealigned optical assemblies to make it easier for customers to integrate our optics into their systems.
I saw that you recently opened a manufacturing facility in the United States. Could you tell me a little more about that?
We did indeed! Right now, we serve our US customers from the UK site. We do all the design and the manufacturing from here in the United Kingdom. It will be massively benefitial to have a US manufacturing presence. Particularly for the US defense market, we need to have business development, engineering and manufacturing within the US territory to support that market, so we've established ourselves there to do that. It's an extemely exciting phase for PowerPhotonic. The big challenge is growing both UK and US operations in parallel. It's a new experience, it makes for some long days, but it's a lot of fun.
What's the best decision that the company has made?
I think the best decision was probably the one right at the start. We had cutting edge process technology based on equipment that we'd developed, and we had a choice: Do we make laser processing systems that can make optics, or do we sell optics instead? When you look at the commercial side of selling laser equipment, it's a much more challenging environment for a startup. Also, the technology then was relatively young, and we could see a significant pipeline of improvements in the process, equipment and product innovation, so we decided to go with selling optics. Then, we could continually improve our equipment processes without having a big support overhead for our customer base. We decided to be an optics designer/manufacturer, and that's been the basis of our growth ever since. We're unusual in that most optics companies buy standard equipment and they focus on their operational excellence or design capability. We've combined developing the equipment and the process and productizing. That level of control has let us develop and release a lot of really innovative processes that you really can't get anywhere else.
Can you talk a bit about how the company was founded and how it has developed over the years?
PowerPhotonic came out of Heriot Watt University, UK. Professor and Optica Fellow Denis Hall, Professor Howard Baker and their research team had innovative technology based on CO2 slab lasers. They saw a strong future in diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL slab lasers). They developed technology in the lab around characterizing pump lasers' deficiencies and how you could manufacture correction optics. I knew Denis and Howard from my time as a PhD student and lecturer at Heriot-Watt, but I had moved to industry during the telecom boom. I was at a company called Kymata that got bought by Alcatel. I collaborated with Denis a while after the telecom bubble had burst, and he told me about his idea. We thought it was worth starting a company, so we did.
We did a couple of years of technology development at the start. The technology was initially developed as research. As a result, there was a lot to develop in terms of production readiness, manufacturing technology and products. We asked, "We can make great optical surfaces, but what does the market want to buy?" We were seed funding ourselves the first couple of years and had a little project money. In 2007, we were ready, and we raised funding from investors and started hiring people. We then aquired premises, more equipment, and started developing. So the real commercial history of the company began in 2006 when we began selling products. It has really grown from there.
Could you tell me a little about your personal career path?
I started at the University of Glasgow, where I studied physics and electronics. I liked the solid science base, but I wanted to apply it in engineering and my first job was as a laser engineer. After that, I went back to university to do my PhD in fiber optics. Later I worked as a lecturer in mechanical engineering for a few years. As I was doing that, I knew that while I loved research and teaching, I enjoyed putting technology to work. In a way, teaching people puts technology to work because your students go out into the workforce, but I wanted to get back into industry myself. So that's when I left academia and went to Kymata. I ran an embedded systems development group and later the hybrids group developing planar lightwave circuits. That technology was ahead of its time. It was PLC waveguide devices with splitters and couplers, modulators, and detectors. It was probably twenty years too early to try and do that, but we had a lot of fun!
What do you see as the value of being a corporate member of Optica?
The main thing I've done with Optica is participating in the Freeform Conference. Serving on the committee has been good for me, keeping abreast of what's going on in freeform optics and related areas. You tend to get farther and farther away if you're not careful. Not only me, but other team members benefited from that conference. Looking ahead, I'm looking forward to getting back to in-person opportunities, like exhibitions. We appreciate getting in front of people and showcasing our products in that way.
