Experience has proven that the ability to design effective production and inspection fixtures is the key to both repeatability and economy in the competitive quartzware manufacturing industry.

WACOM's on-site Engineer and Draftsman (who have over 20 years experience in glassblowing and quartz shop management) allow us to fast-track the design of fixturing from the simplest of time-saving tools, to multi-thousand dollar, ultra-precision CNC modular palette systems.

High purity graphite is used for fixturing and tools that must directly contact quartz parts at softening or near melting temperatures. Stainless steel is used for some cold application assembly and most inspection fixtures. In order to promote a clean environment in our shop, neither graphite nor any metal is ever machined at WACOM quartz. We have found excellent vendors for each of these services and work with them on a daily basis as partners.

WACOM quartz master glassblowers were among the first in the industry to begin using quartz burners and torch tips over 15 years ago. Today lathe mounted and hand-torch burners in our shop have had their design perfected and are purpose built by an in-house team. This allows us the ultimate in flexibility and practically eliminates burner replacement costs. Why use ultra-pure filtered and clean laboratory grade oxygen and hydrogen, only to pass them through a brass or copper burner right at the point of use? By using the same semiconductor grade glass for quartz burners and torch tips as we do for our products, we assure complete cleanliness and eliminate the possibility of metal contamination vaporized directly into the work.

The same Computer Aided Design skills and software (AutoCAD 2000) that we use to design fixtures, of course also allow us to draw, change and transmit electronically our customer's drawings. While WACOM quartz does not technically "design" semiconductor quartzware, we can offer our CAD services to produce professional, customer-owned engineering drawings. Many small customers find this service quite valuable, as do departments which may be doing R&D work within a larger corporation and do not have time to formally submit drafting changes via their own finished specification/drawing steps.

In all such cases, we only produce quartzware from customer approved drawings. In some cases the customer finds it most efficient to let WACOM serve as their draftsmen and CAD operators. Typically we do not directly charge for this service, it is part of our goal of becoming a partner in the customer's success.