At our Kyoto headquarters, we held an internal event titled the “All-Muratec R&D Exchange Meeting” for employees involved in development.
As our company operates across multiple, entirely different business domains, there are limited opportunities in day-to-day operations to share knowledge across departments. To address this, we actively pursue various initiatives to promote internal technical exchange and encourage the creation of new ideas. One such initiative is this presentation meeting, which is held annually with the aim of sharing technologies and know-how cultivated within each department through case presentations, thereby continuously enhancing the company’s overall technological development capabilities.

At this year’s meeting, eight engineers delivered presentations on functions and technologies featured in the latest models as well as those planned for next-generation machines.

As an example of the presentation themes, we introduce a case focused on enhancing the functionality of a new laser processing machine in our machine tool business. In the field of laser processing, there is a growing demand for multi-process machining that enables a single machine to perform multiple types of processing. To meet this need, the development team undertook the challenge of adding cutting capabilities to a laser processing machine by developing structures and mechanisms that enable the installation and operation of a drilling unit.
Laser processing and cutting involve conflicting requirements in terms of heat generation, vibration, and rigidity, making it technically challenging to combine the two. To overcome these challenges, the team developed functional and structural designs that enable stable cutting even on low-rigidity support structures (so-called “spike-type” tables), created a suction system to reliably collect chips, and established machining processes specialized for multi-process operations. These efforts ultimately led to successful market introduction.

In addition to outlining the technologies themselves, the presentation also covered the challenges encountered during development, the trial-and-error process, and practical innovations implemented on site. These real-world experiences provided valuable insights and hints for overcoming obstacles that can be applied across different development themes.