Mr. Kakehashi starts the tour just outside of his office at the Hosoe Factory. On the wall are the world-wide locations of Roland Sales Offices and the corporate officers of these. Mr. Kakehashi takes great pride in his international distribution centers for Roland products.
Here I am with Mr. Kakehashi and also Mr. Jun-Ichi
Miki who is the Managing Director of the Development Section of Roland.
Mr. Miki was my main tour guide.
This is one of many injection molding machines
which produce the black and white keys for Roland keyboard products, including
the KR-1070. The starting products are black and white polystyrene pellets
which are then heated so that the polymer melts. The liquid state of the
polymer allows high pressure injection into molds to create the precision
keys for the keyboards.
This is an example of the switching mechanism
of the Roland KR-1070 keyboard. This assembly contains the delicate and
precise switches for initiating the computer to announce the digital sounds.
Here, Mr. Miki shows a part of the keyboard switch
assembly line. Notice how clean and orderly things are in the Roland assembly
plant.
This Roland employee is working on the keyboard
switching assembly
This is the final inspection of a Roland KR-1070
Keyboard. Everything is just perfect!
This is the chip assembly part of the factory
where robots place microprocessors on motherboards. This operation is so
fast that it is virtually impossible to stop the motion of the robot arm
with even 1/300 sec. The motherboard is completed within one minute! This
part contains the proprietary sound chips and computer cpus and other components
which are the "brains" of the KR-1070 and other digital pianos manufactured
by Roland.
Click on this photo
to continue the factory tour
(Oh yes, I took this digital photo of a lovely
lady who was strolling on the grounds of the Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto)