From Sample to Production: Our OEM/ODM Customization Process

From Sample to Production: Our OEM/ODM Customization Process

Most of the modules on this site ship as standard catalog parts. A meaningful share of our production, though, is OEM and ODM work: a customer's platform needs something our standard line doesn't quite offer as-is, and we build to that requirement. Here's what that process actually looks like, and what it doesn't change.

What we customize

As the manufacturer — not a reseller sourcing from someone else's line — we can modify a broad set of parameters on any module in the catalog, or design a variant from the same platform:

• Mechanical envelope. Housing shape, mounting features, and overall dimensions adapted to fit an existing product design rather than the other way round.
• Optical configuration. Aperture size, beam divergence and lens material tuned for your specific range/accuracy/size trade-off.
• Interface and baud rate. The default is UART-TTL at 115200 bps, but interface and baud are configurable where your host system needs something different.
• Driver electronics. Adjustments to the laser driver and receiver front-end within the platform's safe operating range.
• Firmware behaviour. Measurement mode defaults, output format, and command-set specifics tailored to your integration.
• Logo engraving and packaging. Branding and packaging matched to your product, not ours.

The path from RFQ to production

1. RFQ with your platform requirements. Tell us the target platform, required range and accuracy, interface, and expected annual volume. That's usually enough for us to recommend either a standard model or the closest modified-standard starting point.
2. Module selection or modification scope. We come back with a specific recommendation — sometimes a standard part fits as-is, sometimes it's a standard module with a defined set of modifications, sometimes it's a from-scratch design built to your spec.
3. Samples. Standard samples typically ship within about a week of order confirmation; custom or modified modules take longer, depending on how much design work the modification involves. We'll give you a specific lead time once the scope is defined rather than a generic estimate.
4. Evaluation on your platform. You validate range, accuracy, interface behaviour and mechanical fit against your own hardware and use conditions — the step every good integration goes through regardless of how close a match the sample is.
5. Design freeze. Any remaining firmware, mechanical or electrical adjustments get locked before tooling or production planning starts.
6. Production MOQ. Minimum order quantity depends on the model and how much customization is involved — tell us your expected volume in the original RFQ and we'll confirm the exact MOQ for your case rather than quoting a one-size-fits-all number.
7. Production and calibration. Custom units go through the same in-house CNC machining, clean assembly and automated per-unit calibration as every standard module we build — customization changes the design, not the quality process behind it.

What doesn't change with customization

Whatever the mechanical envelope or optical configuration ends up being, four things hold constant across our entire line, standard or custom:

• UART-TTL as the baseline electrical interface, even when the specific baud or pin mapping is adjusted for your host.
• 905 nm, Class 1 eye-safe design under IEC 60825-1 — we don't customize past the eye-safety classification that defines this product line.
• IP67-rated lens cavity discipline for environmental durability.
• The MTBF ≥ 1,500-hour reliability bar and the same 2-year warranty that applies to standard modules.

In other words: customization changes what the module looks like and how it's tuned for your platform. It doesn't change the engineering and quality bar it has to clear before it ships.

Why work with the manufacturer directly

Customization requests are exactly where working with the manufacturer, rather than a distributor reselling someone else's standard part, actually matters. A distributor can offer you a catalog; they generally can't change the aperture, requalify a firmware behaviour, or commit to a modified MTBF target, because they don't control the design or the production line. As the company designing and building every module on this site — with in-house CNC machining, clean assembly and automated per-unit calibration, and more than 15% of revenue reinvested in R&D every year — we can take on a modification request and own it end to end, from the engineering change through to the calibration step that validates it before it ships.

Two shapes a custom program usually takes

In practice, most OEM/ODM conversations land in one of two shapes. The first is a modified-standard program: you take an existing catalog module — say, adjusting the interface baud, the connector, or the enclosure's mounting tabs — and the engineering scope is small enough that sample turnaround stays close to standard lead time. The second is a from-spec design: your range, envelope or optical requirement doesn't map cleanly onto anything in the current catalog, so we scope a new module against your target specification from the ground up, which naturally takes longer through the sample and validation stages. Neither path is inherently better — the right one depends entirely on how close your requirement already sits to an existing model, and an early RFQ conversation is usually enough to tell you which shape your program will take before you commit engineering time to it.

Starting a program

If you're scoping a custom module program, the fastest way to get a concrete answer is to send an RFQ with your target platform, required range/accuracy, interface constraints and expected volume — we typically reply with a recommended starting point and lead time within one business day.