Our Technology
With POWERAVE® Compact and Benchtop products, Agile Focus Designs uniquely offers digital control of true, high resolution focus and zoom without any mechanical movement. Our patented designs are the simplest and most compact form factors to achieve this. The technology allows for flexible trajectories or multipoint focusing for high throughput inspection with variable zooms available at each point of interest.
Traditional Focusing technology
Manual focusing on cameras and microscopes involves rotating a focus ring or knob, which results in translation of either large lenses or a sample stage, respectively. Automation of the focusing still results in gross mechanical movement and proves cumbersome.
Traditional Zoom technology
Manual zoom with a camera or microscope involves rotating lens combinations. Often, this proves even slower and more cumbersome than focusing. Issues that arise in microscopy include loss of sight with the sample, dirtied objective lenses, destruction of unique samples, the inability to capture dynamic events, and significant loss of time.
Flexible focusing
To overcome traditional mechanical focusing technologies, adaptive optics have been developed to overcome these limitations. Active optics remain stationary while their surface shape or indices of refraction change to alter the path of light. This is similar to how one’s eyes can focus off in the distance and then quickly focus at a screen directly in front of us. Over the last 20 years, the technology has improved to a point where a useful range of fast focusing is achievable. Microfabrication methods have also improved for greater yields and more reliable devices.
Micromirrors
Micromirrors perform agile focusing with simple voltage control. As a voltage is applied their radius of curvature changes. This effectively digitizes focus and when a combination of micromirrors are used, true optical zoom is digitized. In effect, high resolution focusing and zoom is achieved with digital control and no complicated algorithms.
BENEFITS
POWERAVE® Compact and Benchtop products automate true optical zoom and focus without any complex algorithms. The benefits include
Doubles inspection throughput,
Safely preserves samples and lenses,
No vibration/agitation of sample since stage remains stationary,
and 100x faster focus and zoom than traditional technology.
Summary
Our patented technology, POWERAVE, provides independent control of fast focus and zoom without translation of the sample stage or rotation of lenses. It is microscope brand agnostic, so it can be used with existing capital equipment without any changes to the microscope body. Please join our waitlist to be among the first to test the product or sign up for a meeting for further information.