Commitment to quality recognised with certification achievement

Following a successful independent audit conducted by Orion Registrar, the ISO9001:2015 certification of Silicon Designs recognises the company’s commitment to quality in their design and manufacture of MEMS capacitive accelerometer chips and modules for defence, aviation, space, automotive, transportation, energy, environmental and industrial applications. 

Funding for the ISO9001:2015 audit and certification training for Silicon Designs was made possible through a State of Washington Job Skills Program (JSP) grant, awarded via the Green River College Corporate and Continuing Education department.

Founded in 1983, Silicon Designs has built an industry presence in MEMS capacitive accelerometers for zero-to-medium frequency instrumentation requirements. From its earliest days, then-developing accelerometers for the US Navy under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award, Silicon Designs has long centred its R&D efforts around continuous quality improvement initiatives. At that time, industrial-grade accelerometers were bulky, fragile and costly. The engineering team at Silicon Designs listened to the needs of customers who required more compact, sensitive, rugged and reasonably priced accelerometer modules and chips, though which also offered higher performance. 

Resulting product lines were designed and built by Silicon Designs with the aim of exceeding customer expectations. While its core competency remains accelerometers, its business philosophies of ‘make it better, stronger, smaller and less expensive’ and ‘let the customer drive R&D’ remain consistent to this day. 

Low-cost MEMS capacitive accelerometer modules from Silicon Designs are offered in standard ranges from ±2g to ±400g. Onboard voltage regulation and an internal reference minimise temperature and voltage changes while eliminating additional external power regulation requirements. As a result, accelerometer series units are relatively insensitive to wider temperature changes and gradients. 

Carefully regulated manufacturing processes ensure that each Silicon Designs accelerometer is manufactured to virtually identical performance standards, allowing users to swap out parts in the same g-range with few-to-no testing modifications, therefore also saving time and resources. This further allows for a quick plug-and-play solution to almost any application, with total trust in sensor accuracy when used within published specifications. 

In addition, as the OEM of its own MEMS capacitive accelerometer chips and modules, Silicon Designs aims to ensure that all products are manufactured of uniformly high-quality; may be easily customised to exacting standards; and are still available with short lead times and price-for-performance ratio.