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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lapping, contract precision flat lapping and polishing
For over 50 years, Valley Design has been a leader in the advanced material processing and machining industry, working with nearly all material types. We invite you to reach out to our Technical Team to learn more about how to get started with your next project.
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