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Linear Manufacturing Deems it Critical to Keep on Top of Electronics Industry
With a 40-person team, clients are increasingly looking for cloud-connected, mobile solutions
Eric Peterson //March 2, 2018//
Linear Manufacturing Deems it Critical to Keep on Top of Electronics Industry
With a 40-person team, clients are increasingly looking for cloud-connected, mobile solutions
Eric Peterson //March 2, 2018//
LINEAR MANUFACTURING | Product: Electronics + IT | Made in: Colorado Springs
J. Palace founded Linear Manufacturing as a one-man shop in 1997 after working for other chip manufacturers during Colorado Springs' Silicon Mountain days.
"I started with me by myself," he says. "I'd sell by day and build chips by night."
He grew the company during the chip-making boom, but the industry's subsequent bust in the area left Linear in survival mode. "We would build anything anybody would give us," Palace says.
Later, Linear established itself making printed circuit boards, surface-mount technology and engineering services for two key markets. "We got into oil and gas, and got into medical," Palace says. "We started to grow."
Now about 40 employees strong, Linear has many clients that require domestic production due to sensitive IP or other issues, and the company takes on prototyping and low-volume work. The company has a partner in China and can shepherd high-volume manufacturing projects to it.
Clients are increasingly looking for cloud-connected, mobile-centric solutions.
"The Internet of Things is now spilling over into the industrial market," says Palace, highlighting a remote monitoring system Linear developed for an oil and gas company. In the event of emergency, "It'll sen [an alert] directly to somebody's phone."
Looking ahead, Palace sees opportunities in the defense and aerospace markets, as well as autonomous vehicles. After decades in the business, he says that it's always critical to keep on top of innovation in the ever-evolving electronics industry.
"Right now, the manufacturing in the printed circuit board world is more chemical-based than manufacturing-based," he says. "It's getting more complex, where we're essentially printing substrate-based circuit boards on circuit boards."
