Nippon Sheet Glass Co. plans to raise output capacity by 70% for a tiny cylindrical optical lens used in small multifunction printers for the scanning and copying functions.
The company uses the len…
Nippon Sheet Glass Co. plans to raise output capacity by 70% for a tiny cylindrical optical lens used in small multifunction printers for the scanning and copying functions. The company uses the lenses to produce the SLA (SELFOC Lens Array), a device that reads the characters and graphics on a page. The SLA consists of around 800 such lenses on a base the size of an A4 sheet of paper. The advantage of optical lens arrays like the SLA is that they can be located much closer to the original page than the mirror-based mechanisms used in large copiers. As a result, printer makers have begun using them for their small, inexpensive multifunction printers. Nippon Sheet Glass already holds an 80-90% share of the market for the optical lenses, but it expects multifunction printers to grow to 77% of the total printer market by 2007, hence the move to increase production capacity. The company plans to invest JPY 1.5 billion (USD 14.3 million) to introduce new equipment at its Yokkaichi Plant in Mei Prefecture and its two processing factories in China. By spring 2005 the company will be able to make 5 million SLA optical lens units a month. The company aims to boost sales in this area by 50% to JPY 18 billion in 2007.