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Articles by Randall Elgin

Articles by Randall Elgin

Randall Elgin, Business Development, Specialty Products, Technical Sales
Randall started her career at Fiber Optic Center (FOC) in February 2010 as a technical specialist in encapsulation materials for optical applications. Since then she has worked with new materials, optical and otherwise, that enable high tech applications in the photonics industry. She regularly attends the photonics exhibitions in the US and Europe.
Randall joined FOC from Nusil, where she spent 5 years working on the encapsulation issues for Solid State Lighting. Prior to that she spent 3 years at Lightspan in Wareham, MA, learning about and supporting emerging optical applications. Before Lightspan, she was an electrical engineer for 17 years at Sippican Ocean Systems in Marion, MA.
Randall graduated from Boston University in 1984 with a Masters in Electrical Engineering. She and her husband reside outside New Bedford where they built a super energy efficient home, enjoy rural living and take in the New Bedford and Boston classical music scenes.

Are Polymer Waveguides in the Future for the Fiber Optic Industry?

Since the early 1970s, the demand for higher communication and information traffic has caused the optical fiber network to burgeon. In fact, the modern fiber optic network comprises a large part of the Internet backbone. This includes ...
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Sanding 3D Printed Objects: How to Get a Mirror-Polish Finish

Since attending the RAPID 3D event this summer, I’ve been fielding questions related to sanding 3D printed objects. Thanks to our expertise in abrasive films, several engineers and technicians at 3D printer manufacturers and 3D printing production houses – as ...
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Achieving a Teflon-like Polymer with ÅngströmLink AL-2233

Where can I get a little bit of Teflon?  ÅngströmLink AL-2233 is basically that. A Teflon-like polymer dissolved in an evaporative solvent.  To get a thin layer of ‘almost -Teflon’, make a thin layer of AL-2233 and let the solvent evaporate. What...
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Wafer Level Optics – An Example of Micro Imprinting

What is an example of micro imprinting? One of the best examples of wafer level optics is the camera module on your mobile phone. The basic idea is to fabricate layers of microlenses that are stacked up to make the complete optical element, which is then bonded...
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Why Is High Refractive Index Important?

Optical polymers are very specialized materials. Not only are they lightweight, easy to process, strong, inexpensive and transparent; some of them (like the OKP polyesters) have high refractive index. High refractive index?? Refractive index is a measure of how...
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Why the Quality of Plastic Optics Has Greatly Improved Recently

In recent decades the quality of plastic optics has improved drastically. What was formerly considered to be cheap, low-quality lenses are now high-quality, lightweight, low-cost, precision optics. These optics can be seen everywhere (though more likely you...
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Let’s Get Really Small

Nothing in the ordinary world informs our intuition about how materials will behave at molecular interfaces. The cartoon below shows a typical imprinting process: a photoimageable imprint resin formed into a layer on a rigid substrate (silicon or glass wafer), with the...
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Selection of Index Matching Materials

Designing optics for index matching requires knowledge of the refractive index of the adjoining optical materials. By convention, the value of the refractive index at the Sodium D line (589nm, ‘yellow’) is usually quoted for optical materials, even when the...
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Polymers – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know

Welcome to the first blog post on Polymers from FOC.  If you begin following me on Twitter, you will read many insights on FOC’s different specialty products that I manage.  I titled this first blog “everything you ever wanted to know in...
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What to Expect When Working with Foreign Suppliers

OKP has been my introduction to working with a foreign supplier.  We stock this moldable plastic at Fiber Optic Center to make it readily available to users in North America.  Should be easy, right? With all the talk these days about quick delivery service,...
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