Casey D. Foley, PhD — Laser, Optics, Vacuum & Machine Vision Tools

Free engineering tools

Calculators, references, and explainers

28 calculators for lasers, optics, spectroscopy, vacuum, machine vision, and quality. They run in your browser, show the equations and assumptions, and every result has a shareable link.

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Vision System Configurator

Enter your field of view, working distance, and smallest defect. Get a sensor and standard lens, a drawing of the setup, and checks for resolution, depth of field, motion blur, bandwidth, and lighting, with 39 sensors from Sony, onsemi, Gpixel, and ams OSRAM ranked for the job.

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Glazing Performance Calculator

Build single, double, triple, or vacuum glazing from clear or low-iron glass, low-e coatings, and gas or vacuum gaps. Get U-factor, SHGC, visible and solar transmittance, reflectance, color, and spectra to NFRC and ISO 15099 methods, or load measured product data.

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Reference

Formula reference

The equations behind the tools, grouped by topic, with units and validity limits: Gaussian beams, fluence, Fresnel, blackbody, gas kinetics, conductance, and SPC.

7 articles

Knowledge center

Practical explainers on Gaussian beam optics, ablation process windows, vacuum, SPC, laser-sustained plasma light sources, and machine vision optics.

About

From photons to production

I'm Casey Foley, a laser and high vacuum systems expert with a PhD in physical chemistry. I work where lasers, vacuum, optics, and data meet: developing production processes and the measurement systems that keep them in control, and before that, building instruments for spectroscopy and reaction dynamics.

Laser process development

Ablation, scribing, and laser heating with fiber, DPSS, CO₂, and excimer sources. I develop process windows with DOE, keep them in control with sensors and SPC, and document them in SOPs and control plans.

Vacuum & instrumentation

UHV design and builds, production evacuation processes, pulsed discharge plasma sources, cryogenic ion traps, molecular beams, and particle-imaging detectors. I've taken instruments from bare chamber to publishable data.

Optical metrology & vision

Laser-based R-value measurement, phase-shifting deflectometry, confocal profilometry, thermal and distortion scanning, line-scan defect inspection, and color measurement (CIELAB). I take measurement systems from algorithm to plant floor and tie them to yield data.

Spectroscopy & data

VUV, UV, and IR laser spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and velocity-map imaging. I write automation and analysis in Python, LabVIEW, and MATLAB, and build root-cause analytics for production.

99%

Yield on a production laser-ablation process, at 2× throughput

3×

Faster laser drilling cycle; cracks eliminated and other defects cut to ≤1%

40%

Shorter evacuation cycle at the factory bottleneck, with unit quality maintained

$1M+

Cryogenic ion-trap instrument restored to operation

23

Peer-reviewed papers · 450+ citations · h-index 10

SPC · 8D

DOE, PFMEA, Cp/Cpk, 5-Why, 5S, and control plans in daily production use

Selected work

Results in production and in the lab

Each project below states the problem, what I did, and the measured outcome.

LuxWall · Production metrology

Algorithm → plant floor

Thermal-performance and flatness metrology

Challenge: Production needed reliable measurements of insulating performance (R-value), glass flatness, and optical distortion to screen product and guide process changes.
Approach: I developed a proprietary laser-based R-value measurement system, from the algorithm through plant-floor integration, and the protocol for using it in quality screening. For flatness I led development of a phase-shifting deflectometry system (~10 µm) for in-line 100% inspection and wrote a one-command Python pipeline for micron-level confocal profiling. I also built an app that turns thermal-scanner data into per-panel process fingerprints, and benchmarked a distortion-scanner upgrade, which I advised against buying.
Outcome: R-value measurement is integrated on the plant floor for quality screening, and flatness is measured directly at two scales. A cross-instrument study with group-aware cross-validation showed distortion data could not substitute for direct flatness measurement, which kept an overfit proxy out of production.

Laser metrologyDeflectometryConfocal profilometryPlant-floor integrationPython

LuxWall · Production

3× faster · 2× throughput

Laser drilling and ablation in volume production

Challenge: Two production laser processes, a drilling step and an ablation step, needed higher yield and shorter cycle times.
Approach: On the drilling station I traced defects to laser-to-glass height, debris, and process discipline, added in-line confocal distance sensing with auto-focus correction, and integrated a fiber laser, running its factory acceptance test and commissioning. On the ablation station I added in-line confocal depth metrology, closed-loop focus correction, machine-vision part-location correction, and SPC, and set its depth specification from first principles. A root-cause study of ~70k production records then traced cracking at the drilled features, and I developed the laser recipe that eliminated it.
Outcome: On the drilling station, cracking defects were eliminated and other defects fell from about 1 in 10 parts to 1% or less (typical weekly rate), with a 3× faster laser cycle at commissioning. Ablation throughput doubled at ~99% yield.

Fiber laserConfocal sensingMachine visionSPC

LuxWall · First factory

~40% shorter cycle

Evacuation: the factory bottleneck

Challenge: Evacuation is the factory's bottleneck step, so its cycle time limits the whole plant's output.
Approach: I own the process. After leading its development and commissioning for the first factory, I conceived a major process change grounded in desorption kinetics and took it through gated validation: a production-data pipeline, a capacity and bottleneck simulator, a risk-ordered DOE with FMEA, and treated-versus-control rollouts analyzed with difference-in-differences across ~10k units. I coordinated the change across every level of the company, from the production floor to leadership.
Outcome: Cycle time fell about 40% with unit quality maintained and no measurable added scrap.

High vacuumDOESimulationStatistics

LuxWall · Inspection & quality

~70% less variation

In-line inspection and process capability

Challenge: Panels needed dimensional and defect inspection at the line, with data the plant could act on.
Approach: I wrote the specification for a line-scan system that measures the dimensions, squareness, and coating edges of every lite and detects defects, ran a 3-vendor selection, and led factory and site acceptance testing. I set golden-panel and GR&R acceptance criteria, defined its data requirements with the controls and MES teams, and held the vendor to spec by correlating 15,000+ tool scans against manual measurements. I then ran a capability study of 14 in-line QC characteristics (7,000+ measurements), set their control limits, and revised their spec limits.
Outcome: The inspection system works in production. A sensor upgrade cut one placement variation by about 70%, and an interactive capability dashboard, automated reporting, and a root-cause-analysis platform keep quality data visible company-wide.

Line-scan visionFAT/SATGR&RCp/Cpk

Sandia National Laboratories

$1M+ instrument

Cryogenic ion-trap spectrometer recovery

Challenge: A relocated cryogenic ion-trap tandem mass spectrometer was out of service.
Approach: I restored its high vacuum and 5K cold-trap systems, aligned and calibrated a tunable IR OPO/OPA (checked against methane photoacoustic spectra) and UV dye lasers, and rebuilt its synchronized timing and scan control with arbitrary waveform generators and LabVIEW.
Outcome: I brought the instrument back to full operation, then developed IR, UV, and double-resonance methods that produced first-author papers in JACS (2024) and J. Phys. Chem. A (2023), and presented the work at the International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS) in 2022.

Cryogenic ion trapIR OPO/OPALabVIEWMass spectrometry

University of Missouri · SLAC

Plasma-discharge beam source

Plasma-discharge beam source for hypersonic chemistry

Challenge: Studying associative-ionization reactions relevant to hypersonic flight needed fast-atom and ion beams the lab did not have.
Approach: Over two years I designed and built a fast-atom/ion beam machine, from new and repurposed hardware, around a pulsed plasma-discharge source, and characterized the discharge plasmas with MCP/phosphor imaging, cameras, and PMTs. The beam line adds Einzel and deceleration optics, a quadrupole energy filter, and a charge-exchange cell toward electron–ion coincidence imaging; I modeled it in SIMION with custom Lua control and designed parts in SolidWorks. I also built a 118 nm VUV source by tripling 355 nm light in Xe/Ar and ran MeV ultrafast electron diffraction experiments at SLAC.
Outcome: The beam line produced N⁺, N₂⁺, O⁺, O₂⁺, and Ar⁺ beams for the program. As senior postdoc I mentored students and led lab operations, and the program produced crossed-beam papers in J. Phys. Chem. Lett. (2023) and Faraday Discussions (2024) and a 2026 SLAC preprint.

Plasma dischargePlasma diagnosticsSIMION118 nm VUV

University of Missouri · PhD

Science 2021

Quantum resonances in formaldehyde roaming

Challenge: The question was whether quantum resonances couple the roaming, radical, and molecular dissociation channels of formaldehyde.
Approach: I used high-resolution velocity-map imaging with automated, tunable UV laser systems and custom optical detection on a UHV molecular-beam apparatus.
Outcome: We observed orbiting resonances that couple the three channels. I was first author on the Science paper (2021), which has 40+ citations.

Velocity-map imagingTunable UV lasersMolecular beams

Experience

Career

Aug 2024 – PresentStaff Scientist since Apr 2026

Staff Scientist

LuxWall, Inc. — vacuum-insulated glass · previously Laser Systems Engineer (Aug 2024 – Mar 2026)

Technical Leadership: Subject-matter expert for all laser and high vacuum processes and technical liaison between production, R&D, and scaling.
Laser Drilling: Integrated a fiber-laser system through FAT and commissioning for a 3× faster cycle. Root-cause analysis of ~70k production records and a new recipe eliminated cracking, and other defects fell from ~1 in 10 parts to ≤1%.
Laser Ablation: Doubled throughput at ~99% yield with in-line confocal metrology, auto-focus, vision-based part location, and SPC, and set its depth specification from first principles.
Evacuation: Conceived a kinetics-based change to the bottleneck process, validated it through gated trials, and aligned every level of the company; ~40% shorter cycle.
Tube Sealing: Changed the tube-seal laser process and wrote its reaction plan, cutting worst-rated seals from ~15% to ~3%.
R-Value Metrology: Developed a proprietary laser-based measurement from algorithm to plant floor.
Flatness Metrology: Led development of a phase-shifting deflectometry system (~10 µm) for in-line 100% inspection, wrote a Python pipeline for micron-level confocal profiling, and built thermal-scanner analytics.
In-Line Inspection: Wrote the spec, ran a 3-vendor selection, and led FAT/SAT of a ~50 µm/pixel line-scan system now measuring production lites and detecting defects; held the vendor to spec with a 15,000-scan correlation.
Process Capability: Studied 14 QC characteristics (7,000+ measurements), set control limits, revised spec limits, and built a capability dashboard.
Capacity Planning: Built a multi-line bottleneck simulator used by engineering and management.
Quality Systems: Built a root-cause workflow, a postmortem app, and automated KPI reporting in Python and JMP.
Laser Safety: Defined Class 4 controls (ANSI Z136.1/.9, FDA 21 CFR 1040, NFPA 115) for three production lasers; own control plans, preventive maintenance, and SOPs.
Capital Requests: Developed the capital acquisition request protocol that leadership adopted as its model; its first case, an in-line 3D inspection sensor, was approved with a 1.2-year payback.

Aug 2022 – Jul 2024

Research Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Missouri

Plasma Beam Source: Designed and built a fast-atom/ion beam machine around a pulsed plasma-discharge source, from new and repurposed hardware, to study reactions relevant to hypersonic flight.
Plasma Diagnostics: Characterized discharge plasmas for two years (N⁺, N₂⁺, O⁺, O₂⁺, and Ar⁺ beams) with MCP/phosphor imaging, cameras, and PMTs.
Ion Optics: Modeled the beam line in SIMION with custom Lua control and designed its hardware in SolidWorks.
VUV & Ultrafast: Built a 118 nm VUV source (355 nm tripled in Xe/Ar) and ran MeV ultrafast electron diffraction at SLAC.
Mentoring: As senior postdoc, trained students and ran lab operations.

Mar 2021 – Jul 2022

Postdoctoral Associate

Sandia National Laboratories — Combustion Research Facility

Instrument Recovery: Returned a relocated $1M+ cryogenic ion-trap spectrometer to full operation.
Lasers & Vacuum: Restored the high vacuum system and 5K cold trap, calibrated a tunable IR OPO/OPA and UV dye lasers, and rebuilt timing and scan control in LabVIEW.
Spectroscopy: Developed IR–UV double-resonance methods for metal–molecule complexes and peptides; presented at the International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS) in 2022.

May 2016 – Dec 2020

Graduate Research Assistant (PhD)

University of Missouri — Suits group

Science Paper: First author on quantum resonances in formaldehyde photodissociation, measured by velocity-map imaging.
Laser Automation: Designed laser automation and optical detection for UHV molecular-beam experiments; built a REMPI-characterized radical source.
ARL Fellowship: Built a porous-silicon particle workflow from wafer to fractionated particle (Army Research Laboratory, summer 2018).

Aug 2013 – Apr 2016

Graduate Research & Teaching Assistant

Wayne State University

Mass Spectrometry: Developed ionization and IMS-MS methods on Waters, Thermo, and Bruker platforms (research assistant, 2014–2016).
Lab Safety: Wrote the Synapt calibration SOP; laser-safety lead for the Class 3b UV laser.
Teaching: Taught analytical chemistry labs, including chromatography (teaching assistant, 2013–2014).

Capabilities

Technical skills

Lasers & optics

FiberNd:YAG / DPSSCO₂ExcimerVUVTi:sapphireDyeIR OPO/OPAAblation & scribingLaser heatingOptical alignmentBeam diagnostics118 nm VUV generationZemax OpticStudioLaser safety

Vacuum & instrumentation

UHV design & buildProduction evacuationCryogenicsIon opticsHigh voltagePlasma generation & diagnosticsMolecular beamsVelocity-map imagingCoincidence detectionSIMION ion opticsSolidWorks / FreeCAD

Metrology & machine vision

Laser-based R-value measurementPhase-shifting deflectometryConfocal profilometryThermal & distortion scanningDefect detectionCamera-based inspectionConfocal sensorsLaser displacementColor measurement (CIELAB)Line-scan inspectionVision integration

Spectroscopy & analytical

UV/Vis/IRFTIRREMPILIFIR–UV double resonancePhotofragmentationMass spectrometryIMS-MSESI / MALDIUED

Process & quality engineering

Process developmentDOESPCCp/Cpk · Pp/PpkPFMEA8D / root causePDCAControl plansSOPs & work instructionsPreventive maintenanceKPI developmentYield improvementFAT/SAT & commissioningGR&RRequirements & design reviewsLean / Six Sigma training5S · Kanban · poka-yokeValue stream mapping5-WhyTeam leadership

Software & data

PythonJMPLabVIEWMATLABControls & MES collaborationData acquisitionInstrument controlMachine learningStatistical analysisAutomation

Research

Publications

I have 23 peer-reviewed papers (8 as first author) on molecular dynamics, laser spectroscopy, ion spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry, cited more than 450 times, plus a 2026 preprint from ultrafast electron diffraction experiments at SLAC and 15+ conference presentations. Selected papers are listed below.

2026

Heteroatom Position Controls Ultrafast Photodynamics of Oxazole and Isoxazole

B. Downes-Ward, P. Javed, H. V. S. Lam, …, C. Foley, …, A. G. Suits, C. Aikens, D. Rolles (30 authors)

arXiv:2609.31875 · MeV ultrafast electron diffraction at SLAC Preprint
2024

Site-Specific Photochemistry along a Protonated Peptide Scaffold

C. D. Foley, C. Lee, A. Abou Taka, K. Au, E. Chollet, M. A. Kubasik, L. M. McCaslin, T. S. Zwier

J. Am. Chem. Soc. 146, 13282–13295 First author
2023

Molecular Cage Reports on Its Contents: Spectroscopic Signatures of Cryo-Cooled K⁺- and Ba²⁺-Benzocryptand Complexes

C. D. Foley, C. D. Allen, K. Au, C. Lee, S. B. Rempe, P. Ren, E. L. Sibert III, T. S. Zwier

J. Phys. Chem. A 127, 6227–6240 First author
2023

Sulfur (³P) Reaction with Conjugated Dienes Gives Cyclization to Thiophenes under Single Collision Conditions

H. Li, J. Lang, C. D. Foley, J. Zádor, A. G. Suits

J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 14, 7611–7617
2021

Orbiting Resonances in Formaldehyde Reveal Coupling of Roaming, Radical, and Molecular Channels

C. D. Foley, C. Xie, H. Guo, A. G. Suits

Science 374, 1122–1127 First author
2015

Use of Ion Mobility Spectrometry–Mass Spectrometry to Elucidate Architectural Dispersity within Star Polymers

C. D. Foley, B. Zhang, A. M. Alb, S. Trimpin, S. M. Grayson

ACS Macro Lett. 4, 778–782 First author

All 23 publications Google Scholar →

Education

Education & honors

PhD, Physical Chemistry

University of Missouri · December 2020

Dissertation: Quantum Aspects of Roaming Dynamics (PDF). Advisor: Prof. Arthur G. Suits. Particle imaging, laser spectroscopy, laser-system design, and UHV instrumentation.

BS, Biochemistry

Saginaw Valley State University · May 2013

President's Scholarship. Two-year toxicology co-op at The Dow Chemical Company (2010–2012).

Honors & awards

Army Research Laboratory Journeyman Fellowship2018
Thomas C. Rumble Fellowship, Wayne State2014–15
Citation for Excellence in Teaching, Wayne State2014
President's Scholarship, SVSU2009–13

Get in touch

Questions about a calculator, a correction, or a problem in laser processing, vacuum, optical metrology, or machine vision? I'm glad to hear from you.

Based in Michigan. Email is the best way to reach me.