COTSWORKS Blog

Our newsletter is now in its third year and as we’re growing, we’re getting better at updating it and adding content. This blog, Counting Photons, goes along with the newsletter and even sometimes out on its own. I look forward to the day where the word “blog” goes away and we call a web page a web page partially because I don’t like the word “blog” and partially because and online editorial is just that…an online editorial!


It’s been a very hot summer here in the Midwest with near 100 degree days and 80 degree nights. But the cool breeze that comes off of Lake Erie and up over the Heights to my house has made the evenings wonderful. My kids have practiced piano, Cello, and Bass out on the front lawn; I’ll never clean up all the water balloon pieces we’ve created, and somewhere around 3-4 pounds of cherry pits now rest beneath the ivy on the sides of our lawn. I’m lucky to get those evenings because COTSWORKS has been booming. We’ve had some of our best months on shipments and added some wonderful new staff. Our crop of interns has been great with students from Yale, Smith, CWRU, BGSU, and Cleveland State. Several will be continuing part time this fall and I hope joining us full time after graduation.


The interns have built some great products including automating our conformal coater, helping update our new Star Trek door, and washing our ESD smocks (they are interns after all). Our new engineers have been working on several new transceivers including some multi-channel work and 10Gbps parts. I’m really excited about the new transceivers as we have invented new ways of handling fiber, installing transceivers, and making parts rugged from the start. We’ve also started to work on our multi-channel parts.




Transceivers operate using two OSAs in their industry standard form. Multi-channel parts switch to arrays of parts. OSAs use 1.25 or 2.5mm ferrules…the same as a typical fiber cable. Multi-channel parts use fiber ribbons to line up with the arrays. The tolerances here are microns and it is truly amazing that any of this stuff works once to say nothing of making it work over a large production run and a long time. Use on the F-16 and other military programs have shown that this technology can work and offer our war fighters a tactical advantage by offering speed and protocol independent links to smart weapons and surveillance systems. Conferences such as the AVFOP have presented information on these kinds parts for several years. If you want to read more about embedded optics, Optical Interlinks has some very good pictures. Under the testimonials section, they list some of their customers including Stratos/Emerson. Photos on the web page do a very nice job showing what embedded optics look like.


Our product family name for our multi-channel solutions is called HEMI or High End Multi Interface. The product set feature numerous advantages over existing card edge (SFP) or thru hole (SFF) parts from industry standard vendors. As fiber optics finds its way into more and more applications, we hope HEMI meets and exceeds the industry’s expectations.