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50 Years of PCB Manufacturing and Going Strong.
by Matt Stevenson

What do Sunstone Circuits, Watergate and NASA’s space shuttle program all have in common?  They all started 50 years ago, in 1972. 

Well, Sunstone Circuits wasn’t born yet (not until 2005) but our manufacturing facility started making boards in 1972.  Fifty years ago, when Richard Nixon was President; the XI Winter Olympic games were held in Sapporo, Japan, and the summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, Bobby Fischer became the World Chess Champion by defeating Boris Spassky, and Atari launched PONG, the first video game to achieve commercial success.  Looking back to 1972 there was a significant number of newsworthy happenings both in the US and abroad and it is great to have as long a history as some of those iconic events. 

It is amazing to think that our manufacturing roots go back 50 years, considering that there are many businesses, industries, and manufacturing plants that never make it that long.  There have been so many changes to circuit board manufacturing and electronics in these 50 years it is mind-boggling to see how far all have come.  Here is a brief timeline of how our manufacturing and Sunstone have evolved through these 50 years.

• Founded in 1972 by ECD® (Electronics Control Design) in Mulino, Oregon to produce PCBs for the business. 
• Over the next few years, plated through-hole capability was added.
• In 1982 we manufactured our first multilayer PCB
• 1998 added electrical test capability
• 1999 pioneered online quoting and ordering (PCBExpress®)
• 2001 added PCBpro® online ordering and quoting
• 2002 we launched PCB123® CAD software for PCB Design and Layout
• 2005 Sunstone Circuits ® was established from a management buyout of ECD’s circuit board group. 
• 2007 launched Sunstone.com website combining PCBExpress and PCBpro into one website
• 2012 ITAR registration
• 2014 launched DFMplus Design for manufacturing tool
• 2017 launched OneQuote real-time quoting tool, offering full service, dynamic pricing for all PCB types. 
• 2019 ISO 9001 Certification
• 2022 . . .  you will have to wait and see! 

We did not get here without a great deal of help.  There have been so many people who have helped make this run so successful for us.  In fact, there are too many to name each personally, but it runs the gamut from Employees (past and current), customers, suppliers, partners, industry advocates, all the way to Design Engineers.  Thank you, all of you. We would not be where we are today without each one of you.   Your partnerships have been extremely beneficial to getting Sunstone from 1972 to 2022. 

We are excited to see where the next 50 years will bring us and the PCB industry.