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Like many people these days, Tom wears multiple hats - not only is he our President and Engineering Manager, he’s also our “innovative leader” with a constant craving to learn. He came to us with solid credentials - a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from esteemed University of Waterloo in 1981 followed by his licence as a Professional Engineer in 1984.

Electronic Craftsmen is the perfect place for Tom and his expertise because the complex transformers & inductors that we design are essentially electric devices with multi-dimensional mechanical, environmental and thermal characteristics.

Tom takes pleasure in the challenge of figuring out how to build a part after he's calculated the electrical design. Once the technical requirements are met, he puts his creative talents to work on how to best assemble the device to withstand the rigours of time and abuse of its intended environment. Many of our parts are used in highly sensitive and demanding environments and this is where Tom’s expertise is critical.

There is very little new information available on the science of transformers – most books on the subject were written 50+ years ago. In today’s obsession with “digital disruption”, the design of transformers and inductors has become a bit of a lost science; here at Electronic Craftsmen we're reinventing this technology  by combining years of experience with state-of-the-art materials.

One of Tom’s most significant contributions to E Craftsmen is his understanding of Thermodynamics.

He is skilled in the complexity of thermal transfer within the windings & core of a magnetic device and in the mechanics of moving heat energy using air and/or fluid flow. Why is this so important? Transformer heating is arguably the most potentially destructive element in a design and understanding how to effectively extract it is crucial to the long-term reliability of any part.

Tom is renowned for his collaboration with leading aircraft designers on Boeing and Airbus platforms - we’re very proud to say that our parts have been flying in many of these aircraft for over 35 years.

Tom is an essential asset to our clients and to the Electronic Craftsmen team.

He has the drive and the know-how to consistently make parts that surpass expectation – that’s why our clients keep coming back!

As an engineering firm, research and continuous improvement are key elements to our success. Now, we’re taking those best practices beyond our products and apply them to our company brand too.

We did some recent research with our customers as well as within our industry, and discovered that even though the E Craftsmen name was introduced nearly 10 years ago, the Electronic Craftsmen name remained widely used.

So, we decided to borrow from our past, and to build something new for our future.

Moving forward, we’ll be using both the Electronic Craftsmen and E Craftsmen brand names.  There is no need to change your bookmarks or saved email addresses for E Craftsmen.

So, what’s in a name?

As our primary focus is “power electronics”, emphasizing this in our name provides both, clarity on our specialty, and credibility to our brand, so we’re bringing back the prominence of the Electronic Craftsmen name.  E Craftsmen will continue to be used as our corporate name and as a shortened form for our website and email addresses. 

We’re particularly excited to introduce our new logo! It’s already been applied to our website and we’re in the process of adding it to other materials such as marketing collateral, forms, and stationery.

What’s staying the same is our commitment to continuing to provide innovative custom transformers and inductor solutions for our customers.

Let us know if you “like” our brand refresh or send us your feedback at [email protected]. 

In a sea of start-ups, Waterloo Region doesn’t often revel in a 60-year anniversary. But, on November 12, 2017,  in a quiet business park at what used to be the northern edge of Waterloo, Electronic Craftsmen celebrated 60 years of business evolution and innovation.

Electronic Craftsmen has been creating custom transformers and inductors in Waterloo since 1956.

“I have the financial records from that first year of business,” says Tom Bresele, who started as a junior design engineer at Electronic Craftsmen 33 years ago before climbing the ranks to his current role as President. “It was ridiculous…something like $200 or $300 in sales.”

Few records exist documenting the early days of the business.  Financial records indicate that the company was incorporated as an enterprise in 1956 after purchasing assets from the Electro Coil Company. Those early years housed 15 employees in the original Bridgeport and Weber location and in 1967, following the purchase of the business by Fred Sayers, the growing company migrated to 73 Schaefer Street, which continues to serve as its home today.  The company was subsequently purchased from the estate of Fred Sayers by Management in 2009.

Staffed by many like Bresele who have occupied their desk for 10, 20 or more than 30 years, the Electronic Craftsmen team has seen the ebbs and flows of manufacturing in the area over time. Sixty years of business in Waterloo Region called for adaptation to ever-changing environments.

“Electronic Craftsmen is in Waterloo Region because this area used to be the home to industries we worked with most: radio and television,” says Bresele, naming a tiny slice of the manufacturing culture that the Region – and Electronic Craftsmen – once relied on so heavily.

But adapting to regional change isn’t Electronic Craftsmen’s only forte. Given the global and constant need for power electronics and energy storage applications, Electronic Craftsmen often finds itself at the hand of international matters or trend shifts.

Like a lot of businesses following September 11, 2001, Electronic Craftsmen felt the change in economy. "Our clients in aviation dropped orders dramatically, but on the flip side, we saw airport security business increase exponentially. That carried the business for the year,” says Blaine Gray, Vice President at E Craftsmen. Industry changes like offshore developments, increased shipping rates and dying technologies have been a challenge for the team at Electronic Craftsmen, but are also at the heart of their resilience.

“Change or die, I call it. We’ll always adapt to what our customers need,” Bresele says, having directed the business through a number of the aforementioned industry shifts. “We’ll always have an emerging-technology customer in our pipeline.” And they have. Electronic Craftsmen has grown immensely from early business of making small parts for communications technologies. The team of about 55 now serves international clients in fields that range from aviation, aerospace & military to renewables and industrial automation. 

"It's a lot of diversity. We’ll churn out 300 or so designs every year and that’ll turn into 100 different new parts; we learn something new every single day,” says Gray. Bresele doesn’t see an end to this learning in sight. “People will always need transformers, maybe differently, but we’ll adapt to that, too. We’ve made it 60 years; we’ve got another 60 ahead of us.”