“Micromachine 2000” Held
The 11th Micromachine Exhibition, “Micromachine 2000”
was held with The 6th International Micromachine Symposium at the Museum in the Kitanomaru Park, Tokyo, for threedays from November 8 to 10, 2000. The exhibition met with an
enthusiastic reception.
The exhibitors include Micromachine Center and 22 supporting member companies of the center. A record number of
94 companies, organizations, universities, and research institutes joined the exhibition program from Japan and foreigncountries. This exhibition covered state-of-the-art
micromachine technology and results of researches. The sizeand contents of the exhibition have been highly valued year
after year as the largest exhibition specializing in micromachinetechnology, not only in Japan, but also in Asia.
This year’s exhibition disclosed and demonstrated all theprototype systems created by the respective member companies which participated in the 10-year project “MicromachineTechnology” under the Industrial Science and Technology Frontier Program promoted by the Ministry of International Tradeand Industry. In other words, the exhibition was full of thecomprehensive achievements of the R&D activities conductedby MMC’s member companies over a period of 10 years.
The exhibited items on general exhibition included
micromachines, their components and applied systems, MEMSrelated systems, molecular machine related technologies,
micromachine manufacturing related equipment and materials, micromachine evaluation technologies andequipment. This
exhibition was intended for experts and specialists in such fields
as R&D, engineering, design, production, manufacturing, management, and administration of almost all industrial genres
such as machine and precision machine, electric and electronics, medical, information and communications, automobile andtransportation, biology, physics, chemistry, construction, steel,aerospace, ship and marine industries.
The exhibition is an ideal place for companies involved in
the R&D of micromachines to promote their technology, equipment and products. It is also a good opportunity for universities and research institutes to make the results of their researches known to the public. In addition, new companies in
the market find this occasion useful to introduce their products and technologies.
The exhibition was broadcast on several TV news programs.
For example, NHK’s “News 10” aired the exhibition report forabout 3 minutes from 10:30 p.m. on November 7, while Television Tokyo’s “News Eye” reported on the micromachine exhibition also for about 3 minutes from 5:30 p.m. on November 9.
On the same day, NHK Satellite 1 “Economy Frontline” on BS23
broadcasted a special report on micromachines for 8 minutes
from about 11:50 p.m. Furthermore, NHK’s “Good MorningJapan” on General Channel 1 introduced detailed contents ofthe micromachine exhibition in terms of micromachines which
serve the micro world in its “Information Box” corner on themorning of November 15.
The broadcasts focussed on areas of achievements of thenational project “Micromachine Technology” including the “Experimental wireless micromachine system for inspection on
inner surface of tubes” (developed by DENSO CORPORATION,SANYO Electric Co., LTD. and TOSHIBA CORPORATION),“Experimental chain-type micromachine system for inspectionof outer tube surfaces “ (by MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CORPORATION, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., andSUMITOMO ELECTRIC INDUSTRIES, LTD.), “Micro Catheter” (by OLYMPAS OPTICAL CO., LTD.), and the world-smallest experimental system for micro processing and assembling“Microfactory” (developed jointly by Seiko Instrument Inc.,FANUC LTD., Hitachi LTD., Aisin Cosmos R&D Co., LTD.
YASKAWA ELECTRIC CORPORATION, Fuji Electric Corporate Research Institute, and MITSUBISHI CABLE INDUSTRIES, LTD.). Developers of respective systems were interviewed and the inner mechanisms and parts were described indetail.
There were a record number of about 5,500 visitors to thethree-day exhibition. The exhibition floors were crowded withenthusiastic visitors who spent a long time looking at the exhibited items and asking questions to booth attendants.

Exhibition full of visitors From Japan and abroad

Groups of elementary school children studying the exhibited items with enthusiasm

Schedule of next exhibition “Micromachine 2001” Exhibition is shown below.

“Micromachine 2001”
Period: October 31 (Wed) to November 2 (Thu), 2001
Place: Science Museum in Kitanomaru Park, Tokyo
Inquiry: Mesago Messe Frankfurt Corporation.
Tel.: +81-3-3262-8411 Fax.:+81-3-3262-8442
E-mail: micro@mesago-messefrankfurt.com
URL: http//:www.mesago-messefrankfurt.com/micro

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