Corporate Vicissitudes

At the time of the foundation, we had eight employees including the founder, Sei’ichiro Kosaka (2nd from the left). Maybe it would be called a “venture company” now.

Not only offering great measuring precision but also enabling measurement of large parts, this product has sold more than 1,000 units in 10 years, forming the foundation stone for our company’s development.

The headquarters was located in the Kanamachi Factory at the time of foundation.

For the development of our first three spindle screw pump, we invested significant amounts of efforts and money. The pump was installed in Sakuma Hydropower Plant, leading to our start as a pump manufacturer.

We developed Japan’s first electronic surface roughness measuring instrument.

* The area was called Misato Village in Kitakatsushika County at the time of the completion of the factory, and then the village became Misato Town in 1964, and Misato City in 1972. The area currently serves as a bed town conveniently accessible from central Tokyo, with lots of houses. However, the area at the time when the factory opened had nothing but the factory, with expansive fields and empty lots, as you can see in the photo.

Our first centrifugal pump was developed by us for fuel transfer to power plants.

We developed Japan’s first full-fledged roundness measuring instrument (with a rotary table). In recognition of the innovative idea, we received the Akashi Award from the Japan Society of Precision Engineering (current Japan Society for Precision Engineering).

Under our technical collaboration agreement with the German pump manufacturer, J.H. Bornemann Co. KG, we delivered our twin screw pumps for tankers (the agreement was terminated in 1983).

This photo was taken at Showa Seiko Co., Ltd., a food packaging manufacturer, where we worked with their management. We opened a factory in the Dai-ichi industrial park in Moka City, Tochigi Prefecture. Later, Showa Seiko dissolved in 1979 to become Kosaka Laboratory’s Moka Factory.

The rotary detector type has an advantage of enabling measurement of large parts as compared to the rotary table type. We gained strength to offer both types at this point.

A hydraulically-driven submerged cargo pump for discharging liquid from tankers.　The first pump we made was delivered only as the pump part, but from the following year, a complete system including a deck installation-type pump and a hydraulic system was made, which continues in production today.

A bonding machine is a LED (light-emitting diode) manufacturing equipment that is used at various places now. The bonding speed was 1.6 seconds per cycle at that time (currently about 0.2 seconds).

Vectoron, the world’s first articulated three-dimensional CMM, was developed from the idea that an articulated arm coordinate measuring machine would be able to achieve higher operability and functionality than that of a conventional orthogonal coordinate measuring machine. This measuring machine is now essential in the automobile industry and various monozukuri situations.

Developed a noncontact microfigure measuring instrument (HIPOSS ET-10). With increasing demand for noncontact measuring of semiconductors and ultraprecisely-machined surface, this world’s first noncontact microfigure measuring instrument was developed jointly. This instrument with superior measurement resolution attracted world-wide attention.

A scanning tunneling microscope can measure the roughness of ultraprecisely-machined surface and even atoms, enabling measurement of an ultrafine shape in a height direction, which is impossible with an electron microscope.

This machine to bind two bags containing foodstuffs, such as sausages and hams, has been installed at prepared meat manufacturers all over Japan. With the conventional machine, items to be bound were fed by hand, whereas this machine equipped with an automatic feeder contributed to further reducing or eliminating the number of line workers at a factory.

Back then, when only less than 10% of the companies in Japan had ISO 9001 certification, we successfully acquired the first ISO certification of our company’s measuring machine business, which is closely related to quality management.

We developed a machine to automate the task of taping together the lid and the container on the side of lunch boxes and salad cups available at places like convenience stores, a task that was originally manually performed. It not only reduces the number of workers but also enables the clean, uniform application of tape.

We further improved and developed our twin screw pump to enable transfer of multiphase liquid of oil, gas, and water, which had been considered highly challenging. In the following year, we conducted a demonstration experiment at El-Bunduq oil field in UAE and we were able to achieve the performance of this pump as we expected.

Following our Precision Measuring Instruments Division, we acquired the certificate for our pump business.

Equipped with a direct-acting detector, it was developed as the successor of the ET 30 series, with an additional capability of measuring at a low contact pressure. It enables operation and analysis using computers as well as automating measurement.

It is the improved version of CS-600, significantly increasing the number of registered product types and improving the performance, maintainability, and operability.

Since we were accredited as a calibration laboratory according to JCSS (ISO/IEC 17025), we are now allowed to perform specimen calibration based on ISO/TS 16949.

It is a hybrid instrument equipped with a stylus type, a laser AF type, and a white light interference type. Since the development of this instrument, only one instrument, instead of multiple instruments, is required to measure microfigures.

Complying with the SOx (sulfur oxide) emission control standards for ships, this pump is capable of efficiently transferring marine gas oil, supporting environmentally-conscious clean ship operation.

One of the few Made-in-Germany five-axis full-automatic grinding machines available in the world, which is capable of processing within a tolerance of 10 microns, was installed at the factory. This machine with automatic operation requires less personnel, enabling higher-quality and higher accuracy processing at a lower cost.

Without a shaft seal, this pump has no risk of leaking liquid to the outside, enabling safe handling of dangerous liquid if it leaks out and eco-friendly operation. As no exchange of shaft seal is required, the running cost can be reduced.

With the expansion of the production facility, the Moka Division acquired ISO certification.

The measurement of microholes with a high aspect ratio, which was possible only with a destructive test under the conventional technology, became possible with a non-destructive test based on new optical-fiber technology.