A Germanium Ingot Wire Saw That Cuts Free-Form Lens Blanks Directly from DXF Files

Vimfun SGI 40: A Germanium Ingot Wire Saw That Cuts Free-Form Lens Blanks Directly from DXF Files

Vimfun's SGI 40 germanium ingot cutting wire saw handles full-size Ge ingots — Ø 185 × L 400 mm — with two cutting modes on one controller: automatic straight slicing for production wafers, and a DXF contour mode that traces free-form shapes directly out of the ingot.

The contour mode is the differentiator. Crescents, off-axis lens blanks, and irregular outlines — geometries a core drill or ID saw cannot produce — are cut in a single pass at ~0.5 mm closed-loop kerf, with ±0.01 mm Y/Z repeatability. The material math on a $2,200/kg substrate: a 73 × 53 mm crescent blank made the traditional way (rectangle plus milling) wastes ~6.5 g of germanium; cut by wire along the DXF outline, ~0.8 g. At 1,000 blanks per year, that's over $11,000 of germanium kept.

The platform is production-proven: Sunny Optical (HKSE: 2382) adopted the SGI series for an asymmetric crescent Ge lens that three traditional methods had failed to produce at volume, reported a ~30% yield improvement, and has since scaled to 30+ Vimfun machines across its sites.

Vimfun offers a free sample contour cut on customer-supplied DXF and material.