Our History
Quantum Devices, Inc. (QDI) Barneveld, WI, was established as a Wisconsin corporation in October 1989, as an outgrowth of activities in the general area of optoelectronics. Ron Ignatius, the founder of Quantum Devices, was a forward thinker in the industry of silicon manufacturing and light emitting diodes (LED) technologies. Ron’s passion for photovoltaic technology started in the early 1970’s in the solar cell industry in the greater Chicago area. This lead Ron to managing a silicon foundry in Central Wisconsin, before venturing out on his own at the age of 50. With the support of his family and his life savings Ron started Quantum Devices, Inc.
In the early days, Quantum Devices focused on LED technologies and packaging them into systems for the medical industry. With early success Quantum Devices established its headquarters in Barneveld, WI. With the new facility came the addition of a class 1,000 clean room and multiple patents on photovoltaic technologies. One of these breakthroughs was an encoder photodiode technology. This technology was not widely accepted in the industry at first. So in true Ron fashion, “if encoder companies don’t want to use our superior sensing technology, we will.”
In 1999, Quantum Devices became an encoder manufacturer. Early growth was contributed to the industry’s 1st fundamental read 5000 line count encoder in a 1.5″ package. Since these early days, Quantum Devices has developed a full compliment of incremental optical encoders to fit multiple industries and applications.
