Our institute dates back to Japan’s Taisho era (1912-1926) and was founded by Professor Aoyagi of Kyoto University’s Faculty of Engineering, Division of Electrical and Electronics Engineering for the research of tungsten filament. Afterwards, Risaburo Torigai was appointed president of Kyoto University and became the first in Japan to develop reinforcement processing technology (induction hardening) of steel using high-frequency induction heating. RIAS also further advanced research into plasma nitriding technology, and these two areas are still extremely difficult ones no one but us pursues even today. Two years ago, we opened a machinery infrastructure research facility for new R&D activities demanded by society. This means we can now make products designed in CAD, measure their geometric accuracy right there on the spot, and perform metallurgical property inspections.

I spent some time in Germany when I was young, and after I returned to Japan, Carl Zeiss asked me to help because it wanted to sell CMMs in Japan. It was at that time my contact person at Zeiss introduced be to ACCRETECH, and we developed a close relationship. When we decided to open our machine infrastructure research facility, I thought that the introduction of a CMM was essential, and I was friendly with ACCRETECH’s current president, so we purchased a Zeiss CMM from your company.

 I'm quite satisfied with the performance of your products. I often hear that measuring machines utilizing white light interference are affected by disturbances or are very sensitive, but ACCRETECH's measuring machines are not so difficult to use, and I think that's quite impressive. We mostly use Opt-scope to look at the damaged face of a mechanical part where an accident has occurred. My specialty is to consider the causes and countermeasures for mechanical parts, especially when a gear collapses, and measuring machines that can see the damaged face with detailed accuracy are quite difficult, so I truly treasure Opt-scope as it allows me to see the surface shape as if looking at a photograph. A normal photograph would be majorly affected by light, and depending on how the photograph is taken, give people an impression that differs from reality. However, because the Opt-scope is a machine that measures the distance from the optical flat as a precise map, it is not affected by such factors and can tell us quite a lot about the subject.

One point would be that it isn’t clear whether a certain subject for measurement can actually be measured with the equipment until we try it. We’ve had instances where we couldn’t measure a machine part of a certain shape because it collided with the equipment’s lens area. I don’t believe this issue is unique to Opt-scope but rather a very fundamental problem that can be said about measuring equipment in general, however, as a user, I would appreciate a solution.

The quality of steel is very important for machines, but now there is a demand to use inexpensive products such as those made overseas due to price reasons. In such a case, the actual quality may be different from what the customer thinks, which leads to trouble. Currently, there is no optimal method of determining such quality. I think it would be possible to make a good decision if Opt-scope etc. was used efficiently in such circumstances. If this is achieved, people in different fields to users to date will be interested. I would like to study this together with ACCRETECH as an item for the future. I think Opt-scope should demonstrate the advantage of a precise 3D contour measuring machine rather than just a surface roughness measuring machine. The only difference between "roughness" and "contour" is how much frequency component of the surface’s 3D geometric shape is taken. Also, the contour and low frequency component are more important (than roughness) to the machine. It would be quite useful to be able to see this in precision dimensional accuracy as a 3D shape using non-contact measurement.

Measuring machines are difficult, and different users have completely different requirements. Some users want measurements as close to actual as possible, while others don't require that level of precision. It is difficult, but I think it is important to respond not only to accuracy but also various application scenes.