A closer look

"We were once the ugly stepchild," says Clyde Zimmerman, vice president of operations at U.S. Microscope Company.

No longer. When the Carson City company was purchased by a venture capital firm, it was at last allowed to make its own way in the world.

Previously a separate division of The Micromanipulator Company, U.S. Microscope had been used as a backup source of optics by the parent company's long time owner. After his death, Flywheel Ventures acquired both companies.

The new owners, says Zimmerman, recognized the potential of the stepchild company, which had only a handful of employees and no sales staff. Russ De Long, vice president of business development, was hired this year to market the microscopes worldwide.

And while the product was adequate for its use in Micromanipulator products, the previous owner had not kept current with rapidly changing needs of other technology companies.

Now Lenian Zheng, chief engineer and optical scientist, is working on a new class of objectives (lenses) meant to be used not by human eyes, but by cameras. When those cameras are connected to a monitor or computer, people or groups of people can see the display more easily.

"We're agents of change," says De Long. He points to a changing world, moving toward nanotechnologies, a developing field that uses powerful microscopes in production.

But short-term goals are more prosaic.

The immediate challenge, says Zimmerman, is to guarantee the company can "deliver on time a product the customer can take out of the box, and it works like it should."

Sounds like a basic capability for an item costing $10,000 to $20,000, but presently, some customers modify the product to suit their special needs.

"We want to get one microscope body that can be used for anything," he says, "and be upgraded when wanted."

Universities use the powerful microscopes, says De Long, as do the companies where those graduates go to work: ceramics, biomedical, material science, and aircraft design, where engineers continue to test the capabilities of lighter weight materials.

A long-term challenge, Zimmerman adds, is keeping up with the changes in technology that affect the array of industries that buy microscopes. "That's changing minute by minute," says Zimmerman.

For instance, the optics must now work in situations where production processes require near UV (ultraviolet) near IR (infrared) or normal visual light conditions.

U.S. Microscope has several competitors in Japan and also in Germany, says Zimmerman, but is the only domestic builder: hence its name.

With just seven employees, the company's nimble build has turned out to be an advantage.

"We're unique to the industry because the competition was too big to change, he says."

"When camera detector systems came into use, we realized the product worked fine for human eyes, but the artificial eye, due to its increased sensitivity, saw a bump, or distortion in the image," Zimmerman says.

Taking advantage of the situation, De Long mounted a sales campaign, with hundreds of phone calls between road trips to visit customers. He plans print advertising for publications serving the fields of electronics, ceramics, medical, material science, and forensics. And the company got its own Web site up just this year.

Meanwhile, adds Zimmerman, "We're more efficient in how we assemble the product." Changes in components, process and suppliers cut production costs by 40 percent.

A big time saver was a simple thing. When Zimmerman came on board, he found a shop floor where workers trained new hires by word and calibrated controls by feel.

"There were no written assembly instructions," he recalls. "One employee said it took three to six months to train a new hire to set controls to the perfect touch." Now that he's created documentation, an employee can refer to the manual to set the proper torque.

The company expects to increase its workforce, says Zimmerman. "The work requires mechanical aptitude, attention to detail, and a work ethic that includes an incredible level of patience - the determination to make it right, no matter how long that takes."

That ethic drove Zheng, who speaks Mandarin, to make many trips to China to work out details with a supplier. The microscopes contain an array of up to four lenses, cut from glass costing $200 a pound. It shatters with the slightest error in cutting.