About
Modern facilities produce precision coatings
ZC&R is fully equipped to provide in-house coating design, comprehensive testing, and production in low, high, and OEM quantities. Our custom designed 32″ vacuum coating chambers insure the highest quality coatings. Our 64″ vacuum chambers can coat substrates up to 24″ in diameter. All chambers utilize electron beam guns and precise optical monitoring for consistency. Coatings are checked at our clean air inspection stations, while the effects of temperature and humidity are evaluated in our environmental test chamber.
A broad range of coating capabilities
While our coatings surpass the highest industry standards, so does our dedication to service and fast delivery. Our extensive line of coatings includes numerous standard and off-the-shelf products, as well as many unique custom designed filters and coatings. For most coatings, the effective wavelength region can be shifted toward shorter or longer wavelengths to meet specific requirements.
Since 1980, ZC&R has been providing the most reliable precision coatings available, for virtually every application imaginable. You’ll find our coatings in every corner of the globe and beyond-from the ocean floor to the farthest reaches of space.
The company recently moved to a new 21,781-sq. ft. facility (designed and built by ZC&R) that provides a clean and well-organized work area for coating precision optical elements. With our experienced staff of 43 employees ZC&R produces an extensive line of coatings that includes numerous standard and unique custom designed coatings.
Our customers come from a wide range of industries including aerospace, defense, medical, entertainment, and telecommunications. ZC&R also provides coatings to a number of national laboratories and agencies.
ZC&R is continuing to strive for quality. A major step towards continuous improvement has been achieving and maintaining certification as an ISO9002/AS9000 certified company. Another recent advance is the addition of a Class 1000 clean room used for cleaning and inspecting optics having a stringent cleanliness requirement.
New Building - Expanding into a brand new facility in January of 1999 primed ZC&R for amazing growth. Growing into over 21,000 square feet of custom designed work space has allowed ZC&R to continually look at new opportunities for customer service and innovation.
Production Cleaning Lines
Pre-coating inspection is performed under high intensity lighting conditions allowing inspectors to efficiently evaluate surface defects and cleanliness.
Coating Chambers
Ion assisted deposition (IAD) is a key component in producing durable coatings. IAD allows high quality coatings to be manufactured in each of ZC&R’s 64” coating chambers.
Using four 24” diameter plates in each 64” chamber, large area substrates and high quantities are handled efficiently. Tooling is also available for substrates up to 29 inches in diameter.
QC Area
Post process inspections are an integral part of ZC&R. Feedback from our quality control inspectors allows us to ensure quality products are provided to our customers. Inspections for coating and substrate quality are performed according to MIL-PRF-13830B, an industry standard quality document.
Spectrophotometers - A common aspect of optical thin film requirements is the need to evaluate transmission and reflectivity. These measurements are made at ZC&R on Shimadzu and Beckman spectrophotometers. Intensity values as low as 0.01% can be measured. For liquid crystal and other index matching applications, index oils are used to simulate final conditions. These processes allow ZC&R to accurately evaluate the performance of our thin film coatings.
Conductivity measurements in thin films, such as ITO, are made using NIST traceable 4 point probes. These probes allow the conductivity to be measured in Ohms per Square. ZC&R has both hand-held and table top models, allowing measurements on a variety of substrate sizes.