AM Staff

Mazak Corp. (U.S.A.) announced in early January that it had started to install relocation detectors on all of the new Mazak machine tools it manufactures to prevent the resale of Mazak machines to countries and businesses that are currently prohibited from buying them under the export laws of the U.S. and Japanese governments.

What that means is that anytime a machine is moved, the movement will trip the detector, and the machine will not restart. The machine owner will have to get a new code from Mazak to free the machine for re-use.

Brian Papke, president of Mazak Corp. (U.S.A) (www.mazakusa.com) said that Mazak recognizes that some potential customers may be reluctant to buy its machines with the detectors in place, but added that Mazak believes installing the detectors is the right thing to do.

The initiative was launched by Tomohisa Yamazaki, president of Yamazaki Mazak Corp. and will apply to all machines sold by Mazak with no exceptions.

The new detectors require a unique pass code to be entered whenever a machine is moved or installed and the pass code changes each time the machine is moved. A new pass code must be reissued by the company.

While the technology to do this has been available for some time, this is the first implementation designed to prevent violation of U.S. and Japanese export restrictions.

Papke announced the measure at his company’s Manufacturing Technologies for Global Competitiveness conference held in early December at Mazak Corp. (U.S.A.)’s headquarters in Florence, Ky.