Founded in 1983, Asymtek has grown from a very small operation into a leading manufacturer of dispensing equipment worldwide. In April 2004, Asymtek received Intel’s highest honor for its suppliers, the Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement (SCQI) award, which serves as a validation of the performance delivered by Asymtek today.

The keynote address will cover the changes in technology and business growth as well as lessons learned from Asymtek’s unique beginning, to its future trends and challenges in our post-bubble, new business environment.

The story of how Asymtek began and flourished is a tale of high-technology entrepreneurship in the 20th century.

Asymtek’s co-founders Robert L. Ciardella, Phil Maiorca, and Alec J. Babiarz met as recent college graduates at their first “real” jobs at Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the early 1970s, before IBM PC and Apple computers. While there, they worked on the first commercial thermal ink jet printers and participated in bringing the PC into the manufacturing and business environment.

At that time, Silicon Valley and high-tech venture capital were a new phenomenon. Inspired by the trend, they developed an idea on a napkin in a bar after a Lake Tahoe ski trip in 1981. The original concept, a magnetic ink printer, went by the wayside within months but the idea to start something with new technology was set. Three engineers with nearly no business, marketing, sales, or operations experience were too naïve to know they could not succeed.

The concept of using a PC as a manufacturing tool with specialized menu-driven software was almost unknown at that time. The first hybrid circuits automatic pick and place (PnP) machine made by Teledyne TAC (lineage to MRSI) was a modified HP 9872 pen plotter. This device is probably a trunk on the evolutionary tree of today’s SMT PnP machine. Teledyne TAC was Asymtek’s first customer for one Automove 303 XY table and controller.

Initially, Asymtek followed any path that produced sales. Then, it began riding the wave of electronics manufacturing. Asymtek started by dispensing a temporary solder mask with an air-operated syringe in 1984. It continued to ride the wave as it surged with flip chip underfill in the late 1990s. It continues to supply jetting and new techniques for manufacturing the newest OLEDs to meet today’s needs.

Alec J. Babiarz is Senior Vice President and a founder of Asymtek, a manufacturer of dispensing systems. His responsibilities include international sales and service.

In addition, he serves as Vice President, New Business Development for Nordson Corporation, which is Asymtek’s parent company, and he is President of Nordson-Asymtek K.K., a Japanese company.

Since 1983, Alec and the co-founders of Asymtek have built the company from a very small operation into a leading manufacturer of dispensing equipment worldwide. In April 2004, Asymtek received Intel’s highest honor for its suppliers, the Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement (SCQI) award.

Asymtek currently supplies advanced IC encapsulation equipment to produce electronic packages, using cavity filling and underfilling. Customers include AMD, Amkor, muRata, NESK, Seagate, and SPIL. Asymtek also supplies underfill dispensers to cell phone manufacturers and associated contract manufacturers such as Nokia, Flextronics, & Elcoteq.

Alec is co-developer in 31 patents worldwide for equipment and apparatus for fluid dispensing and has written more than 15 papers and articles on fluid dispensing and jetting. He received a BSE degree from Arizona State University and MSME and MSEE degrees from Stanford University. Prior to founding Asymtek, Alec was a project manager at Hewlett-Packard and worked on ink jet technology for printers and plotters.