Pitfall Prevention: How Optomechanical Engineering Drives More Efficient Product Development

Forj Medical’s Nick Smith, principal opto-mechanical engineer, and Jeff Treptau, senior optical engineer, co-authored an article in Photonics Online with Nichola Desnoyers and Mélanie Leclerc of INO on how optomechanical engineering drives more efficient product development for optical medical devices.

The authors traced the journey from lab to launch, showing why optical and optomechanical input belongs at the very start of a program, when early decisions on materials, lens mounting, and operating environment shape everything downstream, through design transfer, where tolerance analysis, minimal degrees of freedom, and design for manufacturability lock in a launch that stays on time and on budget.

They also covered how that same collaboration pays off in scaled manufacturing, from establishing QA benchmarks at the subassembly level to managing revisions through clinical validation and regulatory approval, de-risking the path to high-volume production and reliable clinical use.