Yih Guang Develops Sophisticated Wood Patterns for High-tech Applications

The Yih Guang Machine Pattern Maker Co. was established in 1975 and is now one of Taiwan's leading manufacturers of high-quality wood/polystyrene patterns for foundry shop applications. The company's products are widely used with plastic injection machines, presses, pumps, butterfly valves, hydraulic injection machines, tool machines, bolt machines, extrusion machines, and pipe-making machines.

Wood patterns are essential to the production of precision iron castings for machinery as well as many other industrial products; and Yih Guang has benefited from the constant growth of Taiwan's machinery industry, which is now the fifth-largest in the world. "Thanks to our dedication to the development of state-of-the-art wood patterns," comments Yih Guang's president, Wu Ming-yen, "we have close ties with a lot of domestic machinery manufacturers who need precision iron casting to ensure the reliability of their products."

Decades of experience at research and development have given the company the expertise it needs to make sophisticated wood patterns for precision cast-iron used in such high-tech products as wind turbines. To date the company has developed large-sized wood patterns for 1.5MW main frames, 1.5MW hubs, 1.5MW cross beams, planetary carriers, and 2.1MW main frames used in wind turbines. All of these products have been, or will be, shipped to a German-based wind power operator who is investing in India.

Wu estimates that it takes one to two months to develop and produce a large-sized wood pattern for a wind turbine. "We have to spend a lot of R&D money on the development and production of these products, which are strange to us," Wu notes. "I can assure you that our wood patterns can handle the production of over 500 cast-iron pieces without any worries about a breakdown."

The company became involved in the wind turbine industry about five years ago. "To ride the wave of environmental awareness," Wu explains, "our operations were naturally shifted in that direction, as we had already built up a solid foundation in the field of conventional manufacturing. Our good reputation has helped us to win orders from industries that we are not very familiar with, and our opportunity to get into the wind turbine sector was created by one of our customers a few years ago."

With its success in producing large-sized wood patterns, Yih Guang is now preparing to produce even larger wood patterns for wind-turbine blades. And, in the foreseeable future, it will begin developing wood patterns for the precision parts used in space shuttles.

Wu attributes the growth of his business to word-of-mouth advertising. "Our craftsmanship and high-priced production equipment have convinced our customers that we are one of the world's few top developers of wood patterns for a range of industries," Wu says. One example of its convincing equipment is a 2.4M x 6M double-column inspection machine that gauges the surface accuracy of large-sized wood patterns.

"We have top-notch technology for making precision wood patterns," Wu laments, "but the government has neglected our request for funding. What the government cares for most is the continued growth of such high-tech industries as computers, electronics, and communications, while wood pattern production is considered unimportant because of the small size of the industry."

Wu notes that the domestic wood-pattern manufacturing sector needs more government help because investing in production equipment is very costly. "Most of the wood-pattern manufacturers in Taiwan are small in size," he explains, "and they need government funding to upgrade their operations for the long term and compete for big-ticket orders from abroad."

Yih Guang has gained a good reputation for punctual delivery of orders to industrialized nations including Japan, Germany, the U.S., Russia, Denmark, and the Netherlands. At present, the company is busy producing large-sized patterns for the hubs of wind turbines to fill the needs of the German windpower operator in India.

The company claims close ties with the Ube Machinery Corp. of Japan, which has affirmed Yih Guang's manufacturing skills and helped it gain access to more customers. Wu particularly attributes the continued growth of his company to the orders introduced through the Japanese firm.