Tiny hole problem opens global opportunities for two Aussie manufacturers

Two of Australia’s small high-tech manufacturers have teamed up to deliver an intelligent solution for a complex problem found in the manufacturing of various types of filtering screens.

Originally spun out from CSIRO in 1988, ActionLaser was founded by researchers in high-power laser technology seeking to commercialise world-leading applications. Their description of what they do is that they “are experts at making small holes in thin metal”. Their technology is used to make screens that are used by plastic recycling, food and beverage, water filtration, and other industries.

Quality checks on each of these holes, which range between 90 µm (the width of a hair) and 400 µm diameters are complex. Until recently, ActionLaser relied on manual point inspections by microscope, which was cumbersome, tiring and covered a limited area. The company believed automated optical inspection was an important next step.

Via an introduction through the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre (AMGC), the New South Wales-based company teamed up with Victorian-based OptoTech, a specialist in building laser-based inspection systems for exacting clients in fields including semiconductors, hard drives and medical devices. Between both companies, the vast majority of their work is exported.

“We could previously measure perhaps 100 holes on the disc and extrapolate a measure for the entire disc, but in reality, there’s about 500,000 holes and we really wanted to qualify our work against international peers,” said David Pask, Production Manager at ActionLaser. “As a result of this collaboration, we essentially receive a map of the disc and each hole size which allows us to calculate performance of these filtration discs. From here, we can then calculate what we and our customers call ‘flow through’, a critical measure of performance and something up until now nobody on the planet could do.

“Being able to put flow measurement on ActionLaser’s discs gives us an important competitive edge, because there are many claims made across the industry and we know we are the only manufacturer able to qualify the claim via OptoTech’s assistance.”

Mircea Petre, Director, OptoTech said mapping a disc in high detail was a tricky problem for a number of reasons: the holes are small and the number of features are huge.

“The disc inspection system we have developed with ActionLaser is not something you can just grab off the shelf, it is a highly complex product requiring a complex solution,” Petre said. “Also, measuring — let’s say — one million holes or points of reference is not something that people can contemplate. It is also a task that not many companies are equipped to solve, but we are grateful to have had the opportunity to work on it via AMGC’s introduction.”

The system can show a user’s parameters, including distribution of the holes’ diameters and melt residuals inside holes, as well as hour-glassing, which can lead to rejected parts.

Dr Jens Goennemann, Managing Director, AMGC, said that the work showed the value of leveraging a highly capable manufacturer network to focus on solving difficult, real-world problems.

“Collaboration should be in every manufacturer’s toolbox,” Goennemann said. “There is a magic in finding the right experts and trusting them to deliver on something you couldn’t possibly do in-house.”

ActionLaser is ramping up output of its MeltFilters, which has grown from 100 units a year business to 1500 a year via an AMGC-supported project to commercialise production. Pask sees this growing to 5000 in the future, aided by the new inspection and flow rate data to communicate the product’s superiority to clients.

He said the real lesson has been around getting past an older, inward-looking mindset for building machines by “getting the relevant book from the library and working out how to do it” rather than being open to outside assistance.

Image credit: ActionLaser