Thoughts triggered by a small nut!
China's high-speed rail has achieved impressive results that have impressed the world. However, the small nuts have to be imported, that is, the nuts that never loosen from Hard Lock Industries, a small company with only 45 employees. Many domestic screws and nuts are very loose and often break. Imported screws can break domestic wrenches, but they are still intact...
When the high-speed train is in operation, the high-speed train and the rails are constantly in contact, which creates a lot of vibration. Ordinary screws will be loosened or blown away in this vibration. If you don't want them to be blown away, the screws and nuts need to be tightly fastened and never loosen. This requirement seems simple, but it is not easy to meet it.
Think about it, there are countless companies making screws and nuts in the world, but how many companies can produce nuts that never loosen? It is said that my country's high-speed rail uses the nuts that never loosen produced by this company called Japan Hardlock Industries Co., Ltd.
In fact, Katsuhiko Wakabayashi, the president of Hardlock Industries, invented the U-nut that does not rotate as early as 1961. Five years after he started working, Wakabayashi visited an international industrial product exhibition in Osaka and got inspiration from a bag of information and samples he brought back from the exhibition. Among these information samples, there was a nut that did not rotate that caught Wakabayashi's attention.
Wakabayashi saw the market potential of this nut, but the nut had a complex structure and was very expensive, so he wanted to replace this complex anti-rotation nut with a simpler structure. Eventually, hard work paid off, and it didn't take long for Wakabayashi to develop a simple anti-rotation nut.
The 28-year-old Wakabayashi named this anti-rotation nut U-nut and founded a company to produce and sell this nut. This was the first company founded by Wakabayashi - Fuji Precision Manufacturing Co., Ltd. It took Wakabayashi only more than an hour to develop this anti-rotation nut, but it took more than two years to promote it to the market.
As sales increased, Wakabayashi's confidence also increased greatly, and he launched an advertisement for "nuts that will never loosen." Unexpectedly, this slogan brought trouble to Wakabayashi. The U nuts installed on excavators and pile drivers became loose due to excessive vibration. Some customers filed a lawsuit.
At that time, Fuji Precision Manufacturing Co., Ltd. had monthly sales of 100 million yen, and the phenomenon of loosening was not common. Many people in the company regarded the phrase "nuts that will never loosen" as just an advertising slogan, so they did not take these lawsuits seriously. But Wakabayashi did not think so. He said that since it was publicly stated that this nut would never loosen, it should not loosen under any conditions. But can this be done? The partners were skeptical.
In order to stick to his beliefs, Wakabayashi had to leave the company he founded, taking with him only the patent for the U nut. In 1974, Wakabayashi started his second company from scratch, HardLock Industries, Ltd., in order to produce nuts that would never loosen.
Wakabayashi got inspiration from the tenons in ancient wooden structures and invented a nut that never loosens by adding a tenon to the nut. However, what awaited him was the same long and painful road to promotion as when he first started his business. Since the structure of this HardLock nut is more complicated than that of ordinary nuts and the cost is also high, the sales price is about 30% higher than that of ordinary nuts. This became the biggest obstacle to the promotion of this nut.
When HardLock nuts had no sales, Wakabayashi had to do other work to maintain the operation of the new company in addition to the patent fees of U nuts. Finally, a railway company adopted Wakabayashi's products, proving the strength of this nut that will never loosen. Railway companies are in great need of shock-resistant and anti-loosening nuts, and there are many railway companies in Japan, which brought development opportunities to Wakabayashi's new company. Japan's largest railway company, JR Corporation, eventually adopted HardLock nuts and used them in all Japanese Shinkansen.
HardLock nuts have become the only nuts in the world that will never loosen. They are not only widely used in Japan, but can also be seen in major bridges and buildings around the world. Of course, the success of hardlock nuts will also attract many imitators. In fact, the principle and structure of hardlock nuts are relatively simple. Although there are many imitators, there are almost no successful ones. This is the key to technology. Although you know the principle and structure of this nut with a tenon, you just can't produce a nut that will never loosen. This is their specialty.
From the above introduction, it seems that the invention of this nut is not difficult, but it is very difficult to promote it. In fact, this is an illusion. It is indeed not difficult to invent a nut with such a structure, but to truly turn this invention into a real nut that will never loosen, it still needs to be continuously improved during use. It took Wakabayashi nearly 20 years from the establishment of this company to the full use of the largest railway company in Japan. The continuous technical improvements during these 20 years made the HardLock nut the only nut in the world that will never loosen.
HardLock Corporation has specially noted on its website: The unique technology and know-how accumulated by the company over the years have different corresponding eccentricity for different sizes and materials, which is the key to HardLock nuts being inimitable. You see, they have clearly told you the principle and structure of this nut, but the actual production still requires special experience, which is technology, and this is know-how. Without this technology, even if you understand the principle of this nut, you cannot produce it. Many Japanese companies have this unique technology that you can never learn.
