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Press Release Detail: Thorlabs Acquires Additional Piezoelectric Motor and Actuator Competencies Newton, NJ – November 10, 2015 - Thorlabs announced today that it has added to its motion control capabilities through the acquisition of the “Elliptec” assets of Pantec GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pantec Engineering AG. Located in Dortmund, Germany, Pantec GmbH designs and manufactures high-precision piezoelectric motors and actuators under the product name Elliptec. The technology is employed in a multitude of applications but is particularly well suited to those requiring compact, quiet, energy-efficient motors. The Pantec GmbH team in Dortmund will continue to operate from its current geographical location with its current employees. They will work closely with Thorlabs’ existing motion control engineering and manufacturing teams in Ely, Cambridgeshire UK and Newton, NJ to collaborate on new product development, with future manufacturing based in all of these facilities. “We are excited to combine the unique advantages of the Elliptec motor technology with Thorlabs’ extensive experience in harnessing diverse drive technologies to develop complete motion control solutions,” said Keith Dhese, General Manager of Thorlabs’ UK operation. “The resulting products will not only benefit our existing photonics customers but also enable a wide range of potential OEM applications.” About Pantec: Pantec, a worldwide operating technology group, was founded in 1990 to serve the market with machine and motion control solutions for high precision and dynamic industrial applications. In the last 8 years, Pantec has extended its core competence in the medical device field with a unique, powerful diode-pumped laser product line 3mikron™ with output in the 2 µm – 3 µm range. The organization has strong engineering competencies in electronics, photonics, software, and mechanics. Headquartered in Ruggell, Liechtenstein, Pantec has offices in Switzerland, Germany, and China. Inquiries concerning Thorlabs’ expanding Elliptec product line should be directed to techsupport@thorlabs.com. To learn more about our Elliptec portfolio, please click here. About Thorlabs: Thorlabs, a vertically integrated photonics products manufacturer, was founded in 1989 to serve the laser and electro-optics research market. As that market has spawned a multitude of technical innovations, Thorlabs has extended its core competencies in an effort to play an ever increasing role serving the Photonics Industry at the research end, as well as the industrial, life science, medical, and defense segments. The organization’s highly integrated and diverse manufacturing assets include semiconductor fabrication of Fabry-Perot, DFB, and VCSEL lasers, fiber towers for drawing both silica and fluoride glass optical fibers, MBE/MOCVD epitaxial wafer growth reactors, extensive glass and metal fabrication facilities, advanced thin film deposition capabilities, and optomechanical and optoelectronic shops.