Slides, cuvettes, capillaries, precision tubes, filters, sapphire windows, ceramic probe tips, nozzles, blades, and IR components for diagnostic, surgical, and ophthalmic devices.
IRD manufactures to your print, and works with teams that know the device far better than they know the glass. Send the drawing with the sterilisation route, fluid or chemical contact, optical requirement, and acceptance evidence, and the technical team reviews it for manufacturability before quoting. For a new design that review is free of charge.
Medical glass is not one material or one component class. The operating environment determines the right substrate and finish.
What IRD builds for medical OEMs, from the sample path through the optical path to the tip that touches tissue.
Custom medical and microscope slides, cuvettes, and capillary slides for diagnostic imaging, sample handling, microscopy, and test devices — including field sterilisation and sterilisation verification.
Sterilisable tubes that do not react to gases, body fluids, or chemicals, designed around flow restriction, capillary behaviour, length tolerance, end finish, and interface geometry.
Advanced ceramic geometry for surgical, ablating, cauterising, fluid, and delivery functions, chosen for heat absorption, hardness, ultra-fine grain structure, and longer wear life than steel.
Sapphire windows, optical and filter glass, and infrared lenses for sensing, protection, and spectral control — including sapphire windows added to endoscope probes for durability.
A publicly traded medical equipment manufacturer needed precision tolerances together with a very smooth surface, controlled light transmission, and extreme durability — and was unfamiliar with both the benefits and the limitations inherent in glass. IRD devised a process to hold 5 µm parallelism between a polished surface and two 140 µm polished edge rails, worked closely with the customer's team on the real tradeoffs between glass and plastic, and then recommended, qualified, and implemented a new manufacturing process. The finished process exceeded the component's original lifetime expectation by 1200%. Unit cost went up; overall cost came down dramatically. IRD remains sole source on the program.
Talk to an applications expert
A medical component is qualified once and then has to keep behaving the same way through sterilisation cycles, fluid contact, and thousands of units. These are the controls that decision rests on.
Some glasses are highly reactive to moisture, others sensitive to acidic environments; some are brittle and prone to fracture, others scratch easily. IRD helps choose the substrate with the durability, transparency, and compatibility the device needs before the geometry is frozen.
Thin film, hydrophilic and hydrophobic treatments, anti-reflective coating, UV reflectors, and chemical or heat strengthening are all applied in the same route as machining, polishing, and patterning — so the treated surface is the surface that was inspected.
Probe tips, nozzles, ablating and cauterising tips, and cutting blades are made in advanced ceramics for their heat absorption, hardness, and ultra-fine grain structure, and they run at IRD Ceramics on equipment built for super-hard materials.
Precision tubes are designed to be sterilised, to stay inert against gases, body fluids, and chemicals, and to restrict flow or prevent capillary action by geometry. Length tolerance, end finish, and scratch-dig are all controlled alongside the bore.
The part print remains authoritative. These general process ranges help frame feasibility before material- and device-specific review.
| Attribute | Typical | Best case | Application note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Machining | ±.005″ dimension | ±.0001″ | Mounting features, profiles, and custom geometry |
| Polishing | Ra < 1 µin | Ra < 5 Å | Optical faces and performance-critical surfaces |
| Lapping | ±.000050″ flatness | ±.000010″ | Seals, spacers, and precision interfaces |
| Grinding | ±.002″ dimension | ±.0002″ flatness | ID, OD, surface, and profile grinding |
These are IRD's published general process capability figures, not device-specific commitments and not a substitute for your qualification. Material behaviour under sterilisation, fluid contact, and chemical exposure moves what is achievable, and every feature is quoted individually. Tell IRD what documentation and traceability have to travel with the parts, and the acceptance evidence gets designed into the route rather than added to it.
IRD works with medical teams that know the device better than the glass. The applications team translates device function into material, process, inspection, and packaging choices without asking the buyer to become an optics fabricator — and a dedicated cell then owns the part from raw material to shipment.
The IRD AdvantageUse these lists to frame the first review. The drawing, environment, performance requirement, inspection method, and volume determine the final route.
A web page is hard to attach to a review packet. These are IRD's own published technical documents on the questions this page raises.
The optical components inside an endoscope probe, and why manufacturers add sapphire windows to probes that would otherwise be replaced on a wear cycle.
ArticleApplication noteLaser-based glass micro bonding — glass-to-glass and glass-to-silicon, at room temperature with no added materials — and what it enables for vacuum-tight and heat-sensitive implantable devices.
ArticleApplication noteThe six parts of a spectrometer and the optical components inside each, for teams specifying glass into diagnostic and biomedical instrumentation.
ArticleThe finished component often crosses product categories. These pages cover the nearest materials, processes, and program contexts.
Send the drawing with the device function, the sterilisation route, any fluid or chemical contact, the optical requirement, the controlling tolerances, surface treatments, annual volume, and the documentation and traceability that have to travel with the parts. For a new design, the technical team runs a no-cost Design for Manufacturability review before quoting, then estimates prototype and production volumes separately.
Or call 320.693.7217. If you are still deciding between glass, ceramic, and plastic, bring the application rather than a material — that comparison is part of the review.