AccuCoat, Inc. Supports East High School Precision Optics Program
December 19, 2016, Rochester, NY – Starting as manufacturing neighbors down the street from the city high school, Pat Iulianello and Alan Parsons offered to bring blank lenses to the AccuCoat site for Instructor Paul Conrow’s hands-on classroom. Students and glass blanks made the first sidewalk trip five years ago to see Rochester coating technology in person, and this year the company was helping the school obtain their own coating unit, which was just recently delivered and installed. Sixty students a semester will now reap the benefits of understanding applying mirror and AR coatings, as well as continuing to hone their polishing and coring skills and generate a curve of the applied wavelength.
Conrow, a chemist by training, leaned on the expertise and experience at AccuCoat to source, restore, calibrate and deliver the refurbished Denton unit to his class, with a NYS grant to fund the purchase. The restoration and installation time was donated by the AccuCoat technical team.
“AccuCoat has been phenomenally welcoming, and has gone out of its way to make the facility available to the class,” said Conrow. “Keeping a diverse group of kids interested in learning this process is part of the daily challenge and having the coater in the classroom itself is a huge help. Having a tangible, useful outcome of a coating run is key.”
Starting with the New York Photonics first Optics Summer Sizzler five years ago, a one week summer immersion program into optics, photonics and imaging that was staffed with teachers and volunteers from the New York Photonics Cluster, the East High Precision Optics program has developed over time, helping to bring young, urban Rochesterians find new opportunities.
AccuCoat has been coating on polymer, glass, crystal and metal to military grade specifications for manufacturing and R&D groups around the globe for the past eighteen years. Founded by Paul Meier-Wang and Patrick Iulianelllo, the company employs 20 people and is well regarded in the industry.
“One of ways that Rochester will continue to succeed in the optics world, is the addition of East’s graduates into the mix. We are pleased to have been able to facilitate the use of this coater for the Precision Optics program,” said Meier-Wang. “East High currently has a precision optics manufacturing lab that no high-school in the nation has. We look forward to seeing it’s graduates in the local optics and photonics companies.”
With a wealth of photonics-based work in the Rochester area, HR directors are constantly on the lookout for available technicians. After graduation, East students are encouraged to enter the MCC Optical Systems Technologies program for two years and then become part of the growing optics technology scene in Rochester.
Alexis Vogt, Director of the MCC program declared, “Working with Paul and his students, MCC has more than doubled it’s enrollment in this key area for needed coating technology graduates who will then ready to be hired in the growing Rochester optics community. Skilled technicians of this caliber are in high demand.”
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ABOUT ACCUCOAT, INC
AccuCoat, Inc, is a global provider of high-caliber metal and dielectric thin-film optical coatings, transforming customer supplied plastic, glass or metal substrates into mirrors, beamsplitters and filters featuring AR, Dielectric and Custom Coating designs. AccuCoat offers low to high-volume flexibility for prototyping and manufacturability, as well as volume capacity to suit large or small parts, offering stock or custom designs. With over 85 years of combined optical coating experience, the engineering team will create a select solution that balances cost, spectral performance and product durability. Conveniently located in the photonics hub of Rochester, New York, this privately owned and highly accomplished firm began in 1998 and has developed into a world-class optical coating facility.