Film & Glass Substrate Specifications

Polyester Base Substrate
All photo-tooled films, or photo masks supplied on polyester, are imaged on a highly stable Agfa polyester base. This is always 0.060" (0.18mm) thick, and although it is primarily polyester, it has various coatings and gelatins in which the image is held. Although Agfa polyester film is about just as stable as you can get with photographic film, all film still has inherent problems with stability when users work with the film at temperatures and humidity that differ from the original processing conditions.

We process our films at 21deg C, 50% humidity, and we strongly recommend that these conditions are used in your own production environment. For further information about polyester dimensional stability, please use the Dimensional Stability Calculator to see what differences in overall length may occur when environmental conditions change.

Glass Substrate
We stock mostly Soda Lime glass blanks for photomasks, due to it's excellent quality/price ratio. Masks are generally supplied on regular sized square blanks, although for a small premium we can cut these down in size to meet your specific requirements (please note this is a manual method and we cannot guarantee tight tolerances).

Quartz substrate can be supplied where optical qualities require this, although we do not stock all the variations in sizes, so their may be a small delay on your first order. Unless requested specifically, we always supply on Soda Lime Glass with the default thickness.

Chrome Metalisation
Our standard chrome finish is low reflective - this is achieved by slightly tarnishing the chrome side of the mask with an oxide. However, we can supply high reflective chrome masks if ordered specifically..