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About Midel Photonics

We make beam shaping work in production.

Midel Photonics develops and produces reflective beam-shaping optics for demanding laser processes. We design, structure and measure every optic in our own facility in Bonn, and we stay involved until the beam does what your process needs. Most projects start with a conversation about a challenge, not a datasheet.

Founded 2022 in Bonn, GermanyDesign, structuring and metrology in-houseDelivered worldwide
What we do

We shape the beam around the process.

A laser system gives you the beam the source happens to produce. A working industrial process needs the energy distribution the application calls for. Those two are rarely the same thing.

We close that gap with reflective diffractive optics, designed around your laser, your optical setup and the process requirement. The portfolio covers defined beam profiles, multispot splitting and three-dimensional beam shaping across the working volume.

Beam shaping isn’t the goal on its own. What matters is a beam that fits the process, and an integration path that fits the system you already have.

Where the name comes from

Midel is short for micro-delamination, the manufacturing innovation the company started from, and still the basis of how our mirror surfaces are structured.

In production

Where our optics run today.

Beam shaping only counts once it holds up in a real machine, with a real material, across a full shift schedule. More than 50 laser-system builders, integrators and process labs work with Midel optics, and a few more come on board every month. Three of those projects:

EVOSYS Lasersolutions
Plastic welding

High-performance plastics that pushed conventional laser welding to its limits, welded with stable, reproducible seams and zero rejects against automotive and medical quality standards.

Read the use case →
Aconity3D
Additive manufacturing · LPBF

Ring-core shaping in a user-exchangeable carrier. Operators switch beam profiles at the machine in minutes, with a reproducible profile across repeated insertions.

Read the use case →
BBW Lasertechnik
Copper welding

A 3× larger process window and spatter-free seams, replacing beam wobbling, retrofitted into the existing head in under 30 minutes.

Read the use case →
Engineered in Bonn · supported worldwide

Designed and manufactured in Germany. Available where you build.

Every optic is designed, structured and measured in our own facility in Bonn. Sales and application support run through regional partners in Korea, Japan and the US, with worldwide availability through Edmund Optics.

Midel Photonics · Germany
AYIN Technology · South Korea
FIT Leadintex · Japan
CourierTronics · United States
  • Midel Photonics Germany
  • AYIN Technology South Korea
  • FIT Leadintex Japan
  • CourierTronics United States
  • Edmund Optics Worldwide
Where the technology comes from

The short version of where this comes from.

A method for structuring laser-mirror surfaces came out of doctoral research at the University of Bonn. It was built to create optical environments for fundamental physics, not for industry. Dr. David Dung, Dr. Christian Wahl, Dr. Christopher Grossert and Frederik Wolf took it out of the lab to find out whether the same precision could shape laser beams for production processes.

It could. Since then, people outside the company have looked at the technology closely and put their name or their money behind it.

A patented structuring method

The process was developed in experimental research at the University of Bonn, within the ML4Q Cluster of Excellence, and it is patent-protected. It is not a variation on an existing optics-manufacturing route.

Around €1 million in transfer funding

EXIST Research Transfer is Germany’s leading research-transfer grant, awarded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. It funded the step from microscopic research structures to industrial optic dimensions.

Innovation Award Finalist

All-Reflective Beam Shaping was a Finalist for the Laser World of Photonics Innovation Award 2025, in the category Optics and Manufacturing Technology for Optics.

Backed by HTGF and NRW.BANK

HTGF, Europe’s largest tech investor, NRW.BANK and experienced investors from the laser industry have all put money into the company. It went into production capacity and portfolio, not into more research.

Research, transfer and financing partners
University of BonnML4Q Cluster of ExcellenceRWTH InnovationEXIST — Existenzgründungen aus der WissenschaftHIGH-TECH.NRWHigh-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF)NRW.BANKLaser World of Photonics Innovation Award 2025 Finalist
Gefördert durch das Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz aufgrund eines Beschlusses des Deutschen Bundestages

The development of Midel’s reflective beam-shaping technology was supported by EXIST Research Transfer, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action on the basis of a resolution of the German Bundestag.

How we engineer

Engineering starts with the process.

You cannot pick a beam shaper off a shelf and expect the process to follow. What works depends on the result you need, the laser, the beam path you already have and the conditions the system has to survive.

01
Understand the requirement
We start with your process, the laser configuration, what is limiting you today and the beam result you are after.
02
Define the optical approach
We turn the target profile, the design conditions and your integration constraints into an optical concept.
03
Manufacture and measure
We make the reflective element and measure it against the specification it was designed to.
04
Support the integration
We go through the integration path with you or your system partner, and agree the next technical steps.

Optical design, microstructuring and metrology all happen in our own facility in Germany. Every design and every batch is documented and traceable, so the same optic can be re-ordered against the same specification years later.

Management team

The people who developed the technology still run it.

Beam shaping is not a product line here, it is the whole company. The structuring method came out of the founders’ own research, and the people who developed it still run the technology, the production and the company. What began as that one method now runs in the series machines of leading OEMs, as 3D shaping, ring-core, homogenising and multispot optics, and the 3D Top-Hat and 3D Gaussian exist nowhere else. We keep asking what else a beam can be made to do, then whether the answer still holds on a production floor years later, with nobody watching. That second question decides what we build.

Dr. David Dung Dr. David Dung Strategy & Business Development Email LinkedIn
Dr. Christopher Grossert Dr. Christopher Grossert Production & IT Email LinkedIn
Dr. Christian Wahl Dr. Christian Wahl Technology Email LinkedIn
Frederik Wolf Frederik Wolf Finance & Sales Email LinkedIn

Bring us the process. We'll help define the beam.

You do not need a finished optical specification to start. Tell us about your process, the material, your laser setup and the result you need. We’ll tell you what the relevant questions are and whether this is worth pursuing.

Discuss your challenge