ABOUT US

MechaTrans® design and manufacture

We design and build the mechanism that mechanically enlarges or reduces the displacement produced by a piezoelectric device.

Technology transfer and consultancy

We transfer piezoelectric device technology to companies moving into mass production, and advise them through it.

Development and technical services

We develop, design, manufacture and support other actuator applications and new filtering technologies.

How we support customers

A displacement enlargement mechanism that reaches forty times, brought to market

From a company feature published by the Kawasaki Institute of Industrial Promotion under the heading Precision Instruments and Machinery. The article describes the company as it stood in 2005.

A displacement enlargement mechanism with no limit on where it can be used

A piezoelectric element is a passive device that works two ways. Force applied to it becomes a voltage, the direct piezoelectric effect, and a voltage applied to it becomes force and displacement, the inverse effect. The first is what lights a gas hob or a lighter. The second drives watches, electronic buzzers and the fine positioning mechanisms in precision machinery.

Working with the displacement of a piezoelectric element has real advantages: efficient conversion between electrical and mechanical energy, a fast response, good controllability and a small package. Its one serious drawback is that the displacement is tiny, from a few microns to a few tens of microns, and that has kept an excellent device confined to a narrow set of uses.

The company developed a mechanical transformer that overcomes exactly that. It turns 40 microns of movement into 1.6 mm, a factor of forty, and it opens the device up to industrial equipment, medicine, automotive, consumer products, aerospace and more. The mechanism is already supplied as a core component in customer products: linear versions drive punchers, air valves and pumps, and a rotational version generates angular displacement for spatial phase modulation.

The other makers of displacement enlargement mechanisms, dsm in the United States and Cedrat in France, use a flextensional structure that reaches roughly ten times. The company presented its own approach at ACTUATOR 2004 in Germany, where it drew considerable interest.

The world’s fastest piezo impact printer, twenty years earlier

Ken Yano, the company’s president, graduated from the School of Science and Engineering at Waseda University. From 1980 he spent close to seven years at NEC developing printing mechanisms, and produced the first and fastest piezoelectric dot impact printer in the world. It was covered as a landmark product by Nikkei Mechanical, appearing on the cover, and around 30,000 units of the NM-5020 Mini Ace Kanji Writer were sold.

Printing then moved rapidly to inkjet. The impact printer, dominant for a while, had run its course, and the piezoelectric technology behind it was shelved with nowhere else to go. It was a direct lesson in how a new technology can displace an established one.

Founding the company after retirement, because the technology deserved it

Yano reached retirement in March 2000 while on secondment. He paid a visit to Professor Toshiro Higuchi of the University of Tokyo, who had supervised his doctoral thesis in precision machinery engineering. Reluctant to see the expertise go to waste, the professor gave him a desk in his laboratory. There Yano discovered how many companies were eager for actuator development, and with the professor’s strong encouragement he founded Denshi Seiki in May 2002. The name changed to Mechano Transformer in May 2005.

For the new company he asked Kazuo Yakuwa to join as a management adviser who understood the technology. Yakuwa had been a respected rival in vibration component research, holds a doctorate in engineering from the University of Tokyo, graduated nine years ahead of Yano, and was then working as a TAMA coordinator and SME management consultant.

Denshi Seiki started in a vacant factory in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Conditions were not good, and when a talented young graduate of the Higuchi Laboratory, Chee Sze Keat, was about to join, the company applied for a place at the KBIC incubator. It was accepted after three interviews, and went on to win the Kawasaki Entrepreneur Award for Excellence. That recognition brought credibility, and the business gained real momentum.

A partnership across a generation

In 2005 the company had two full time staff, with Yakuwa serving as a part time director. Chee Sze Keat joined in April of that year. He studied precision machinery engineering at the University of Tokyo and then in the Higuchi Laboratory of the graduate school of engineering, where Yano, who had a desk in the same lab, had already become someone he turned to for advice on research topics and his thesis. He joined because of Yano himself and because of what the company was building.

Yano founded the company on the idea of contributing to society through new technology, out of gratitude for a long career. The company motto puts contribution to society first, contribution to customers second, and business performance third. Chee argues that ethics alone will not feed anyone and that there is a limit to what you can give: earning a fair profit is what makes a larger contribution possible.

Yano puts it another way, saying the finest cigars blend old leaves with new. Watching the two of them work in step is what makes this company interesting.