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Wilsonville manufacturer says Clackamas County grant funded hires, equipment upgrades
Summary
A representative of Photo Solutions told Clackamas County officials the county’s Economic Outreach grant allowed the Wilsonville optics manufacturer to hire four people, add a manufacturing engineer and buy equipment that stabilized production and opened new contracts; the grant amount was not specified in the transcript.
A representative of Photo Solutions, a Wilsonville, Oregon firm that makes optical encoder disks and other precision optics, told Clackamas County officials the county’s Economic Outreach grant helped the small manufacturer add staff and buy equipment that stabilized production and enabled new contracts.
Photo Solutions’ representative said the company moved to Clackamas County in 2020 because of the local skilled workforce and manufacturing infrastructure. “We moved to Clackamas County in 2020,” the representative said, adding that the county’s location and existing industrial base helped the firm grow.
The company said it serves aerospace, medical and robotics markets, including lidar systems for driverless cars, and operates two production lines: mylar film encoders and one‑by‑one glass encoders. A colleague described the glass encoders as made “one by one,” arguing the manual process produces higher quality than mass‑production machines.
According to the company representative, Photo Solutions experienced significant growth during the pandemic and entered 2025 “pretty tight on cash.” Their CPA alerted them to a program from Clackamas County Economic Outreach; the representative said the resulting grant allowed the firm to onboard four new employees, including “a manufacturing engineer that has really increased our capacity,” and to procure “a new film camera operating system” that will increase film‑side capacity.
The representative also said the firm installed a humidifying system to reduce humidity fluctuations that cause process instability in glass laser cutting. “We were able to really stabilize our laser cutting process in glass which has gained us new opportunities in the semiconductor and the biotech industries specifically for microfluidics,” the representative said, attributing those new opportunities to the improved process control.
Photo Solutions said it currently employs about 25 people and hopes to continue growing in Clackamas County. The transcript does not specify the dollar amount of the grant or additional financial terms.
The company expressed gratitude for the county program and interest in future county support to sustain growth and onboarding of new products and equipment.
