Case Study| Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.

Yamaha Motor’s LBAS05 and LBAS08 motorless single-shaft actuators utilize Miki Pulley’s “SFC (Metal Disc Spring Coupling) Model.”While every manufacturer has its own policies for aligning shaft centers, Miki Pulley’s single-point mounting structure makes assembly easy and virtually eliminates errors during the process, which is a huge help to us.

　We’ve always had immense trust in Miki Pulley’s couplings, but what really stands out in my memory is how their sales representative visited our company frequently to promote their products, even though we had almost no business relationship with them at the time. Thanks to
that sales representative’s efforts, we learned that they sell a variety of other products besides couplings.It was also the sales representative’s product promotion that led us to adopt Miki Pulley’s “BXW (non-excitation type brake) model” for our YK400XR small SCARA robot.

There was an instance when a single-axis robot using a brake from another company encountered issues in the field, and while we were struggling to find a solution, Miki Pulley introduced us to a brake manufacturer, which allowed us to resolve the problem.

Ever since then, I had hoped to work with Miki Pulley one day. Later, when I was assigned to lead the development of the YK400XR compact SCARA robot, I reached out to Miki Pulley, and we decided to adopt the “BXW (non-excitation type brake) model.”

Thanks to their cooperation in delivering the performance and cost we expected, we were able to develop an attractive product. During evaluation and durability testing, Miki Pulley’s development team also went above and beyond, allowing us to launch the product smoothly.Thanks to their support, the YK400XR compact SCARA robot has become a flagship product that underpins our sales. Currently, the YK400XE-4—a successor model with further improved performance over the YK400XR (and, of course, equipped with the BXW model)—is on the market.

The sales representatives at Miki Pulley have such extensive expertise that we really appreciate being able to consult with them on technical matters right on the spot. Plus, whenever we have an issue, they come to our office and handle it with great care.

The strength of Miki Pulley’s products is that they continue to function without breaking down. Thanks to this, we’ve had no major issues even in our main market of China, which has been a huge help. Since we’ll need to keep adapting to significant market fluctuations going forward, we’d like to request an even more flexible supply system.

In the future, it would be great if we could implement predictive maintenance by sharing data in advance that helps anticipate when products might fail. Also, as product development cycles continue to shorten, it would be very reassuring if Miki Pulley could establish a system to evaluate products in parallel with our own development.