Timbercon Offers Illuminating Products

Originally Published MPMN January/February 2009

MD&M WEST: FIRST-TIME EXHIBITORS

Timbercon Offers Illuminating Products

Bob Michaels

When people think of fiber optics, they often have telecommunications or cable television networks in mind. But fiber-optic technology is also a key enabler in the medical device sector—just ask Timbercon Inc. (Lake Oswego, OR).

Timbercon began in 1997 as a provider of connectivity technology. “The company’s first foray into fiber optics occurred in 2000 and now accounts for most of its revenue,” notes marketing coordinator Cynthia Lee Rozanc. “As a result, the company is considered a single-source provider of specialty fiber-optic product solutions.”

Responding to clients’ need for specialized precision optical assemblies, the company began to engineer and manufacture products to satisfy surgical, diagnostics, and optical imaging requirements. “The need for rugged, highly reliable fiber cables arose from specific customer requirements,” says Rozanc. “This resulted in the introduction of Timbercon products to the marketplace.”

Fiber optics has been used in the medical industry for years. The physical characteristics of fiber make it suitable for many medical applications, including illumination, instrumentation, image transfer, and laser-signal delivery. Fiber-optic technologies perform site illumination either as integrated components of an instrument or as an individual light source. They are employed in examination lights, headlights, laryngoscopes for blade illumination, anoscopes with annular illumination, otoscopes, binocular indirect ophthalmoscopes, and heart catheters.

Rozanc says that the age of less-invasive surgical procedures allowed Timbercon to introduce its bare-fiber products to the medical field. “The lensing of bare fiber makes it extremely useful for the precision requirements of many surgical procedures,” she explains. Meeting those requirements, the company offers standard cables, ruggedized cables, custom cables, mechanical transfer (MT) and polarization maintaining (PM) cables, multifiber distribution assemblies, couplers and splitters, variable and fixed attenuators, adapters, network simulation modules, bare-fiber processing, and fiber-optic cleaning kits.
In 2009, the company plans to seek ISO 13485 certification. In the meantime, it will also display its wares at MD&M West, showcasing customized fiber cable assemblies used in surgical and diagnostic instrumentation, laser eye surgery equipment, CT and MRI imaging systems, endoscopy imaging and ablation technology, and ruggedized surgical-room communications.

www.timbercon.com
Booth #254

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