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Company Capabilities

Product philosophy

Micos Engineering GmbH (Micos) is a Swiss independent advanced engineering SME that focuses on system engineering for optical instrumentation serving the European industry and space market. The company also developed its facilities through a variety of projects, leading to the current product philosophy being split between engineering with full system development, and services through the use of some of the company assets.

Certifications

Micos has certified operators for soldering according ESA ECSS-Q-ST-70-08, as well as for crimping & wiring operations in conformance with ECSS-Q-ST-70-26 and for the application of strain gages following ISO 9712 (non-destructive testing at level 2 for the method ST of the multi-sectorial sector PS).

Micos Quality Management System with the scope Engineering and AIT for opto-mechanical systems and mechanisms for space market and derived products for allied areas is certified by the Swiss Association for Quality and Management Systems (SQS) according to the ISO9001:2015 standard since December 2017. The current certificate (registration number 41444) issued December 2020 is valid up to December 2023.

Engineering

Micos has primarily the core competences and knowledge in the domain of spectroscopy systems, opto-mechanical systems and allied technologies for space devoted applications. Before funding or joining Micos, key personnel has participated in various projects for European and Canadian Space Agencies as well as different prime contractors. Micos capabilities range from feasibility studies and research and development, to turn-key one-off systems.

Micos expertise covers all aspects of the development of optical instruments including data processing and analysis:

  • Project leadership

    • Project management to ESA standards
    • Procurement
    • Quality assurance /product assurance to ESA standards

  • Project design

    • Optical design
    • Radiometric design
    • Mechanical design
    • Thermal design

  • Assembly Integration Test

    • Opto-mechanical assembly and integration within ISO7 to ISO5 cleanrooms
    • Optical performance testing
    • Mechanical performance testing
    • Thermal vacuum testing
    • ISO6 and ISO5 cleanrooms

      Micos ISO6 and ISO5 clean room areas

Through the design phases, Micos Engineers are used to a number of simulation softwares covering optical (imaging, illuminating and straylight), thermo-mechanical (design to manufacturing drawings, FEM analyses) as well as other multi-purpose softwares (scripting, programming and ad-hoc modelling). In-house scripts have been developped to bridge mecanical and optical models, one example being the ability to import thermo-elastic surface deformation from FEM analysis to the optical models.

  • Software tools

    • Optical engineering: Zemax, FRED
    • Mecanical / Thermal engineering: PTC Creo, FEMAP, NX Nastran, MAYA
    • Scientific computation & data processing: Matlab, Python

Services

  • Thermal vacuum tests

    • Dimensions: ⌀=1100mm, L=1200mm
    • Vacuum down to 10-7mbar
    • Temperature from -50°C to +150°C
    • ISO6 and ISO5 cleanrooms

      TVC area

    • ISO6 and ISO5 cleanrooms

      Thermal vacuum environmental test preparation

  • Specialties & niche competences

    • Vacuum setup for radiometric characterization of IR equipment
    • In-house equipment for temperature calibration to 10mK 3σ
    • Straylight characterization bench for SWIR and VNIR optics elements, both in transmission and reflection
    • Imaging FT-IR spectroscopy processing, breadboarding and engineering
    • Nephelometer for aerosol and dust characterization on Earth, asteroid and planetary exploration
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