Anaheim Electronics Plant Robbed : Crime: Three gunmen burst into the factory and assault several employees but get away with little, police and company say.

In another in a series of armed robberies that have Orange County high-tech companies on edge, three gunmen barged into an electronics manufacturing plant Sunday night and assaulted several employees. But they made off with only a small amount of goods, police and company executives said.

The men, described as Asians who were not wearing masks or gloves, stormed through the back door of Dovatron Manufacturing Southern California, in the 1500 block of South Sinclair Street about 7:30 p.m. Sunday, just as 25 employees were walking in from a break, police said.

The robbers sprayed several of the employees with a caustic chemical, robbed them of their valuables and then forced them all into a women’s restroom, police said. The men then ransacked the plant for about 30 minutes before fleeing.

No suspects have been found and police are still investigating, Anaheim Police Lt. Ted Lebahn said.

The robbers may have targeted the firm in the hope of obtaining expensive, high-tech parts that could easily be resold, Lebahn said.

The number of such crimes has been on the rise as robbers have attempted to capitalize on increasing demand for such parts. In May, for example, robbers held several employees at gunpoint at Centon Electronics in Irvine, making off with memory chips valued at as much as $12 million--the country’s biggest chip heist to date.

But the local Dovatron plant, a division of Boulder, Colo.-based Dovatron International Inc., manufactures circuit boards and other parts on a special-order basis and uses relatively few of the valuable memory or microprocessor chips. The division, which has 200 employees in Anaheim, makes parts for medical, industrial and automotive customers.

“I think their intention may have been the same [as in the Centon robbery], but if so, they went home grossly disappointed,” said Spencer Chapin, the division’s president. The company was still calculating the value of the stolen circuit boards Monday but called the loss “insignificant.”

Seven employees were transported to a hospital for minor scrapes and bruises after the robbery, but no one was seriously injured, Chapin said.