Press Release

November 26, 2007

Massachusetts Firm Provides Alternative To Off-Shore Processing

The Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, Inc. have once again selected Litron as a Super Sixty Award recipient, honoring the region’s fastest-growing, privately owned businesses

At a time when other companies are trying to shore up sales, Mark Plasse is worried about too much work.

Plasse is president of Litron, Inc., a leading supplier of laser machinery and services for medical device and aerospace applications. Three years ago, Litron moved from its first small office in Springfield to a sprawling new plant in the Agawam Industrial Park. Since then, demand has doubled for the company’s electronics packaging services, and new tube-cutting equipment has been brought online to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Even so, says Plasse, he is careful to keep the company’s focus tight and growth ambitions well-guided. This month, he created three Litron divisions—medical, aerospace and industrial—and is about to make big news in the medical and aerospace industries with new advancements.

High-Volume Cutting, Not an Ocean Away

At the January Medical Device & Manufacturing (MD&M) West trade show January 29–31 in Anaheim, CA, Litron will announce its new, fully automated process for high-volume tube cutting with a high degree of accuracy and repeatability.

The process is based on proprietary auto-feed tube-cutting machinery developed by Litron specifically to help medical market suppliers find a cost-effective, high-quality alternative to off-shore processing. The equipment allows for a controlled, validated process that delivers remarkably high consistency even for applications with very tight tolerances.

“The challenge with high-volume cutting is that it’s traditionally accomplished using a manual feed,” said Litron President Mark A. Plasse. “But that introduces the potential for human error. This process eliminates operator error and allows for ‘lights-out’ (off-hours) production with a tolerance level within a half-thousandth of an inch.”

“The most valuable aspect of this process is that it’s repeatable, which eliminates the risk of shipping tubes with an unpredictable degree of accuracy,” he noted. “This is critical, because a bad shipment can completely shut down a customer’s production line while the problem is identified and solved.”

Litron has been using the process for selected clients for more than a year, and has fully tested and documented each step. The company will now offer the service to medical market manufacturers nationwide.

ESD Control for Mission-Critical Parts

As a primary outsourcing partner for some of the biggest names in aerospace manufacturing, Litron has become a leader in the safe handling of mission-critical parts.

The company recently applied for and received certification for its Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Control System. The certification was sought to verify Litron’s reliability in the handling of critical components while supplying laser welding, hermetic sealing and other laser processing services. It confirms that Litron’s ESD control system complies with the requirements of ANSI/ESD 20.20.

In addition, Plasse is upgrading Litron’s hermetic sealing area into a certified clean room. “These are unusually diligent steps for an outsourcing partner in the laser welding and hermetic sealing business,” said Plasse. “This certification documents the huge investment we have made to protect the components we work on from initial housing manufacture to final hermetic seal.



“Northrup-Grummon, Raytheon, Lockheed and other major contractors simply have to be sure their components are not compromised,” Plasse said. “We take that responsibility very seriously.”

Improper ESD handling, he noted, is a product failure waiting to happen.

About Litron

Founded in 1997, Litron, Inc. is a worldwide provider of custom laser systems and a leading supplier to the aerospace, defense, and medical industries for contract manufacturing services in laser welding, hermetic sealing, and hi-rel electronic packaging.