DATRON Hy Tech Forming Case Study

Hytech provides solutions for forming, embossing and trimming thin film plastics. Their focus is primarily on thin film plastic parts requiring precise graphic registration. There are also nongraphic applications where the Hytech forming processes provide benefits over other traditional forming processes. Their patented technologies are utilized by OEMs in the Automotive, Appliance, Medical, Aerospace and Military industries.

But the forming of this industry leader was not a straight line or the execution of an entrepreneur’s finely-crafted business plan − and that's what makes this such an interesting story. When the company was founded in 1980 the primary focus was on selling patented hydro form embossing equipment. The first machines were sold to nameplate and membrane switch manufacturers. One of their big customers was the Rogers corporation in Phoenix, AZ. At the time, Rogers was a really big electronics company who did automation for circuit boards and electronics assembly and one of their customers was Coleco. Through Rogers, the owners of Hytech got wind of a problem with the Coleco Baseball Game which was a hand-held game (precursor to a unit like the GameBoy) that simulated sports games with a series of LED lights. On that game, to advance the runner, the user pressed a tactile button that had a tactile dome underneath it that provided a snap and a response so that it would push the key back up. When those games were first launched, they had stamped out metal domes and users were getting damage to their thumbs and the domes were cracking and not lasting long.

Hytech asked Rogers why the dome wasn’t made out of plastic. They found out that nobody was making the dome out of plastic. So, the first thing they did was invent a specialized thermoforming technology for embossing a dome in polyester and proceeded to sell millions of these domes to the Rogers Corporation and then went on to sell tens of millions of them to Hewlett Packard for their line of financial or scientific calculators. The production advantages (compared to the metal domes) on parts like membrane switches is that you could lay down 100 plastic domes in a single sheet whereas with the metal domes you had to pick and place all 100 into the location.