If you agree that the future is bright for companies working in the field of development and application of fibre optics, then Melbourne’s Diamond Australia Pty Ltd is likely to remain a standout Australian Small to Medium Enterprise.

It is clear the future in this information age will see more and more people becoming connected with faster speeds, and that is why Diamond General Manager, David Henderson, is confident about business prospects for Australia’s largest manufacturer of optical assemblies.

“Fibre is becoming central to system development,” Mr Henderson said. “There is a growing need for real time applications and this takes band width so fibre optics is becoming important now.”

Diamond has vast optical fibre optics experience – basically cable and connector assembly for data linkage, and the development of fibre optic products generally. Located in the east of Melbourne, the company, first established in 1994, now employs 50 people with 35 on the manufacturing side of the business. It is part of the global group of Diamond companies and occupies the largest optical manufacturing facility in Australia. Its business interest is spread widely across Defence, telecommunications, aerospace, broadcast, data networking, mining and research. In defence industry, Diamond has worked with Prime and SME contractors on projects such as Parakeet and JORN, and with DSTO in addition to direct work with the Battlefield Command and Support System office.

Mr Henderson said defence work generally involved Diamond providing optics for the connection of information systems mainly used for data transfer and telecom. “Also, there are opportunities for fibre optic sensing and other similar applications,” Mr Henderson said.

“With battle space awareness and the needs of future soldiers, providing opportunities to plug-in and connect across vehicles, aircraft and ships is a big part of it. The capabilities of fibre optics comes into its own with information loads increasing.”

Diamond is also developing products enabling new technologies such as polarisation maintaining assemblies for laser-range finding, high powered connectors for optical sensing and high density connectors for small area and large fibre counts.

“A typical new application is fibre sensing for aircraft such as the JSF to sense if certain components are becoming fatigued. Such applications can also measure stresses on particular components,” Mr Henderson said.

Diamond is a high capacity manufacturer with 8000 optical connectors per week and accommodates high and low volume runs. The company also engineers prototype equipment including ruggedised fields units and repair and refurbishment of optical components.

Optical connectors are polished to a very high level. This Spider polishing machine allows connectors to be polished in a precise way with an operator who loads it from one side and then takes off the completed connectors from the other.