Tiny Gears to Drive the World

At the corporation’s Sha Yang Ye Robot Wonderland in Tao­yuan, a robotic Techno Prince Nezha dances to rock music and science-fictiony robots play electronic music. Visitors to the mu­seum’s interactive area can also pit battle bots against one another and use robots to play field hockey. The museum uses these interactive exhibits to introduce the public to a variety of innovative technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Opened eight years ago, Sha Yang Ye Robot Wonderland is Asia’s only robotics-focused tourism factory and has hosted more than 300,000 visitors to date. But for all that local taxi drivers are well aware that Sha Yang Ye produces robots, fewer people realize that the company made its bones producing geared motors. In fact, it currently produces 15 million of them every year, and domin­ates the world market for micro-geared motors.

Sha Yang Ye Industrial Corporation’s Taiwan factory largely produces micro-geared motors.

Crucial to everything

“You can find at least 200 motors running in our every­day living spaces, driving things like electric tooth­brushes, hairdryers, robotic vacuum cleaners, coffee makers, and vending machines,” says Sha Yang Ye CEO Tsai Feng-chun. “You might even say that we live in the motors’ space.” Elaborating on the importance of small components, he explains that the more we automate our lives, the more we need motors.

Born in Zhudong, Hsinchu County, Tsai went to work for the US’s Timex Group as a technician after finishing his military service. When Timex relocated its Taiwan opera­tion to the Philippines in 1980, Tsai borrowed money to establish his own small workshop making hairsprings (a crucial component of mechanical timepieces) and internal mechanisms for motorcycle RPM gauges.

By 1985 he had become experienced in the production of small moving parts, and transitioned into gearboxes and geared motors. When German power-tools powerhouse Bosch went looking for Asian partners for power drives in the 1990s, it found Tsai’s Sha Yang Ye.

Tsai’s company began supplying gearboxes for Bosch’s power tools in 1995, and has continued to work with the company to the present day.

As multinational corporations move around the world, their personnel shift and their corporate cultures change. This proved true for Bosch when it expanded its production from Switzerland to Malaysia and then to Chengdu, China. “Every change presents challenges. If Taiwanese small and medium-sized enterprises want to adapt to these changes, they sometimes have no choice but to take what their clients offer. They have to evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses, and have a clear grasp of both themselves and their customers.” Tsai says that Sha Yang Ye’s impec­cable product quality and reasonable pricing allow it to be flexible in managing its customer relationships.

At one point, Tsai set up a factory to manufacture electric drills. But the new venture required a level of inventory that stressed the company’s operations and made capital more important to its success than tech­nology. Realizing that Sha Yang Ye would be better served by sticking to its core competencies, he abandoned the drill business and refocused the company’s efforts on improving its core technologies.

Sha Yang Ye CEO Tsai Feng-chun has leveraged the company’s core micro-gear actuator technology to expand into the market for service robots.

The secret

Motors move things, their power passing through geared reduction drives that reduce rotational speed and increase torque at the output. Even very small geared motors often have as many as 50 parts, which Sha Yang Ye makes in house. In addition, the company owns more than 100 gear hobbing machines, a number unrivaled by the world’s other geared motor makers. Tsai explains: “Every geared motor has several [interlinked] gear stages. As with watch parts, the choice of gear ratios determines the balance between output speed and torque. The gears themselves are all different sizes. By using different machines to turn out gears of different types and sizes, we’re able to fill orders quickly. It’s an advantage that we’re proud of.” 

Sha Yang Ye currently derives 60% of its revenues from supplying geared motors to major manufacturers of power tools and garden tools such as Bosch, Panasonic, and Makita, producing most of them in mainland China.

In Taiwan, it focuses on micro-geared motors, which are used in everything from sailboats and cars to robotic vacuum cleaners and medical devices.

Sha Yang Ye is the world’s leading provider of geared motors for power and garden tools, supplying its products to major American, Japanese and European brands.

Acquiring a new direction

When Tsai noticed at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan that robots were an emerging trend, he began to explore this new opportunity.

Rather than venturing into industrial robotics, Sha Yang Ye focused on the development of service robots, utilizing its own servomotors and planetary gear motors in their production. It went on to open Sha Yang Ye Robot Wonderland in 2014 to exhibit the more than 30 robots it had developed.

The company uses its own products extensively in its robots. For example, the museum’s singing and dancing “extra­terrestrial” robots use 36 geared motors and have servo­motors in their joints. Its “black bear” robot, which won a Taiwan Excellence Award, uses 17 geared motors within its 3D-printed shell. The “black bear” and the cute Techno Prince Nezha robot have gone on to become distinctively Taiwanese products. Sha Yang Ye’s extension of its capabilities from motors to robots has also bene­fited the company by broadening and deepening its core tech­nolo­gies.

Sha Yang Ye established an educational and cultural foundation in 2018, using its Robot Wonderland to create a platform through which it could communicate with businesses, offer “maker training,” and further the develop­ment and production of its modular robot kits.

These kits arose out of Tsai’s acquisition of a startup called Cagebot, and have reinvigorated Sha Yang Ye. “The acquisition came about by chance,” says Tsai. “There’s a bit of a story there.”

Back in 2015, the German company Siemens sent two engineers to Taiwan to build automated facilities for a Taiwanese electronics company. The two en­gin­eers both ended up falling in love with Taiwanese women, and chose to remain here, founding their own business. Although they raised several million NT dollars to fund their develop­ment of modular robot kits, they burned through it all in less than three years.

Because the first three generations of Cagebot’s kits used Sha Yang Ye’s geared motors, Tsai well under­stood the obstacles that Cagebot was facing. After talking things over with his team, Tsai decided to buy the company. He says that by mating parts from Cagebot’s various kits, you can assemble things like robotic arms and remote-controlled vehicles. If you add in geared motors and microcontrollers, you can build ­intelligent ­driverless cars and carts, and even small production lines. The process is great training for makers. 

Micro-geared motors may be tiny, but they are vitally important.

Robot education

In addition to serving as vice chairman of the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robotics Association, which promotes the country’s robotics industry, Tsai holds a street performance license and regularly drives a mobile classroom to schools for educational shows about and featuring robots.

Since 2018, the Sha Yang Ye Cultural Charity Founda­tion has linked together all of Taiwan’s robot-related competitions and organized the Taiwan International Robotics Tournament. In 2019, teams from more than 20 nations competed in 54 categories at the four-day-long event, which was held at the Taoyuan Arena and attended by 170,000 people. More than 4500 teams have competed in the tournament over its first three years of existence.

Over the last few years, the world’s manufacturers have embraced AI, Internet, and smart manufacturing trends. Sha Yang Ye’s actuator solutions such as micro-­geared motors and servo­motors are now driving automation at traditional manu­facturers and finding wider application in “smart” lifestyles. Sha Yang Ye believes that actuators set these new lifestyles in motion. As the company states in its motto, “Give me a gear to turn, and I will move the world.”

Sha Yang Ye has used its servomotors in its “Avatar” disaster relief robot, Prince Nezha robot, and battle bots.

This robotic arm, assembled from a Cagebot kit, can help make smart lifestyles a reality.

Tsai regularly talks with his team about improvements to manufacturing processes.

Sha Yang Ye Robot Wonderland’s STEM classroom offers courses on robot design, programmable controllers, and electromechanical integration. (courtesy of Sha Yang Ye Industrial)