I got my start in the film thickness monitor business in 1987, as an employee of Inficon™, in East Syracuse, NY. I had just left a job as a process engineer at General Electric Semiconductor, and I needed a change! So I immersed myself in learning a new technology, quartz crystal microbalances, and soon found that I liked it a great deal. But I felt that existing products were somewhat lacking, and had the urge to design some new ones.
It was at Inficon that I invented the aluminum-coated crystal as a replacement for gold coated ones. I had been assigned the task of determining why crystals failed while being used to monitor dielectric films in optical coating. I soon found that film stress was the culprit, and by making a very thick coating on the crystal surface, I could buffer that stress from the quartz. Surprisingly, it worked, leading to crystal life increases of 300% or more. Unfortunately, I was told that in spite of this discovery, this was not going to be a product the company would sell.
About a year after I left Inficon, I ended up working at a vacuum coating company, Evaporated Metal Films, in Ithaca NY. It was there that I learned about the process of coating dielectrics and multilayer films. I also learned first hand about why crystal failure was such a problem!
The president of Evaporated Metal Films asked me to set up an internal quartz crystal manufacturing facility. The crystal consumption was very high there, and it made economic sense. So we proceeded to make our own crystals, and I convinced them to make aluminum coated crystals as well as gold, since they were doing primarily optical coating. The results were so good that we created Mass Measurement, a discount quartz crystal manufacturer. We focused on establishing a new crystal price point, $3.95 each, and also sold aluminum crystals, which we renamed “Alloy”. These two innovations helped us grow quite quickly!
After a year and a half, however, I wanted to run my own firm. So, I left Evaporated Metal Films and in 1990 set up a quartz crystal manufacturing firm in my garage! I initially named it Cold Springs Research, but after having some customer confusion with a similarly named firm, soon changed it to “Cold Springs R&D, Inc.”
About the same time Paul Becker of FilTech™, Inc approached me and asked if I would make private labeled crystals for his vacuum coating supply company. I agreed and began making gold, silver and “alloy” crystals under the FilTech™ brand. I also sold direct, but because Paul was such a good salesman, most of our output went to him and we ended up being an anonymous manufacturer. Of course we ended up in a building considerably larger than the original garage so it was worth it!
I created Tangidyne Corp in November 2001 while I was still owner of Cold Springs R&D, Inc. At the time, we were growing quite rapidly as a replacement crystal monitor company, producing upwards of 1 million crystals per year. The operation of the company was an all consuming affair, but something I enjoyed, for the most part. Eventually, though, it became apparent that I was spending all my time following a market, but not creating one. That was not very satisfying. And in order to start innovating, I felt I needed to disconnect, at least partly, from Cold Springs R&D day-to-day operations.
I wanted Tangidyne’s mission to be the development of radically different crystal sensors that would replace existing technology or open up new sensing possibilities. I immediately began researching fundamentally new crystal designs. I had no preconceived notions, though I did have some ideas that I hade been thinking about for many years, but never got down to actually doing anything about.
Surprisingly, this research quickly resulted in several new products that we now sell: RC™ crystals, the worlds first QCM that is insensitive to radiant heat, the OptoCrystal™, the world’s first QCM that can pass light, and the ThermaHead™, the world’s first heated vacuum film thickness sensor. In addition, all three designs eventually received US patent protection.
While developing these and other, yet to be released products, it became apparent that these products represented the future in microbalance technology, and should exist on their own. Since I didn’t have the time to run two companies simultaneously, at least not in the fashion I was accustomed to, I decided to sell Cold Springs R&D to the Paul Becker and his family of Boston on January 1, 2004.
And there you have it. Well, sort of.
Besides continuing to work on new product designs, including high temperature gallium phosphate microbalances (with my partner company, Virginia Beach Sensors), I am going to revisit the old. Quartz crystals are still too darn expensive! So to remedy that, I have re-introduced standard replacement crystals, but at a decidedly lower price point. It’s the least I can do for my loyal customers. And I am actively developing an even less expensive crystal. It’s slated to be introduced in late 2007 (but only when its ready!) and will be priced in the low $2.00 range!
So stayed tuned....
Scott Grimshaw
Tangidyne Corp