Schäfter + Kirchhoff GmbH

Schäfter + Kirchhoff GmbH in Hamburg is 70 years old! The company started in 1955 with classic lens design and customized optical solutions. Gradually, the focus shifted to today's product lines, which are still manufactured in the heart of Hamburg and distributed worldwide: polarization-maintaining fiber optics, lasers for machine vision, line scan cameras as well as scanner and inspection systems.

Throughout our 70 years, our key focus has always been on combining high optical precision with high mechanical precision. This focus ensures the high quality, stability and longevity of our products. 

It is reflected for example in the 60SMF laser beam couplers, which are used for coupling into polarization-maintaining fibers (PM fibers) and due to their outstanding precision and quality achieve very high coupling efficiencies with long-term stability.

Our fiber optic products have been part of quantum experiments for over two decades. The current portfolio enables light transport in PM fiber cables and light distribution in our fiber port clusters, which have recently been extended to include acousto-optic modulators (AOMs) for frequency and power modulation (e.g. in an integrated double-pass AOM). In addition, we offer beam launchers that enable illumination with multicolor beams of customized size, as used for laser cooling or atom manipulation.

Another example of our successful optomechanics can be found in the field of machine vision. The latest member of this product family, the AdheScan system, is based on a specially developed image acquisition system combined with a trainable machine learning algorithm. It provides a quantifiable, reproducible, and highly efficient evaluation of adhesive failure surfaces according to the DIN standard. The AdheScan is just one example of our industrial and research-grade system solutions.

Our customers are manifold and use our products, for example, for basic research on the International Space Station ISS, for the search for dark matter, for work on quantum computers, for sending probes to Mars, for climate research in polar ice or for the investigation of corrosion phenomena. Our customers include nanotechnology leaders, Nobel Prize winners, semiconductor manufacturers, solar cell testers, manufacturing process optimizers, and more. 

We serve major industries worldwide, including the automotive, solar, aerospace, and semiconductor industries. Our components are integral to key technologies that drive the global economy. We are often at the cutting edge of these developments and are in constant exchange with scientists and experts in the field. Our R&D, manufacturing and sales operations are closely linked, enabling us to respond quickly and efficiently to our customers' needs.