Super-size Crystal LED display helps AMADA showcase innovation to customers and guests

Established in 1946 and headquartered in Kanagawa, AMADA Co. Ltd is a large Japanese manufacturer of metalworking machinery. Customers’ metalworking operations are supported with a wide range of solutions including machinery, software, peripheral equipment and maintenance. The company’s production centres on five main business areas: sheet metal machines, cutting machines, grinding machines, presses and precision welding.

Here we interview two AMADA executives to find out why Sony Crystal LED display technology was the obvious choice for expressing the company’s innovative technological vision.

Kazuyuki Yamauchi, AMADA Co Ltd: With the rapid progress of technological innovation in recent years, manufacturing sites in the metalworking market are also facing a variety of challenges. These include adapting to the processing of new materials, automating operations, saving labour, improving productivity, and pursuing lower costs. AMADA has been working with its customers around the world to address these challenges.

Over the past three years we have completely renovated the existing AMADA Solution Centre at our headquarters, in order to develop further production innovations. We opened the AMADA Global Innovation Centre (AGIC) in February 2023 as a state-of-the-art exhibition and processing verification centre for co-creating the manufacturing of the future with customers by strengthening existing verification and processing functions.

AGIC features a total floor space of approximately 30,000 square metres. ‘Innovation SQUARE’ is a vast space on the first floor that can host presentations of new products and large-scale in-house events. Since many customers and employees gather here, we needed a display solution that was highly visible from the back and sides of the space. Coinciding with the renewal of AGIC, it was also the right time for Amada to announce our management policy to further strengthen our technological orientation.

We examined various displays that would allow customers and guests to experience our advanced technology with overwhelmingly powerful images. We came to the conclusion that Sony’s Crystal LED technology – in a display size of 24.3m wide by 3.4m high, one of the world’s largest – would be ideal for the purpose.

Yamauchi: I was surprised when I first saw Crystal LED, especially by its outstanding ability to reproduce deep, glossy blacks and their high contrast with other colours. With such a large screen size, it’s not uncommon with other displays to notice coarse image quality and seams between panels when viewing up close. With Crystal LED you can sense the fineness of the screen, even up close – and the seams are so natural that you don’t notice them, unless you look really closely.

AGIC plays a central role in our exhibition facilities and is the face of Amada, so it’s a place where customers are always welcomed. The displays will be used for a long period of time, so ease of maintenance was also an important factor when we were deliberating over our choice. From this perspective we selected mainly domestic manufacturers. Here Crystal LED stood out from the crowd in terms of maintainability and reliability – like the ability to easily swap out only defective panels, as well as meticulous after-sales service.

Hiroyuki Miyabuchi, AMADA Co Ltd: Of course, images that have been shot in 4K are displayed with very high resolution – but Crystal LED also beautifully displays other images such as Internet videos. Curious guests invariably ask questions like ‘how do you display that?’ and ‘what manufacturer is this?’ When I answer that ‘it’s Sony’s Crystal LED’, everyone is impressed by its high performance.

Miyabuchi: We’ve introduced Crystal LED to showcase AMADA’s world-class technologies and products – and everyone involved feels that we’ve made a really good decision. There may be displays in the world that are wider than ours, but many of them need to be viewed from a distance to look good. We’re proud of the fact that we were able to install a Crystal LED system that measures 24.3m across, but still looks beautiful even at a distance of just 1m from the screen.

Yamauchi: AMADA offers its customers a wide range of products, and combined with peripheral devices this means there are countless variations. Since it’s difficult to actually exhibit all of these products physically at AGIC, we’re considering using Crystal LED to display them life-size for our customers to experience. We may also be able to hold events where we project domestic and international locations and exhibition halls on Crystal LED with overwhelming realism, so visitors can have an immersive experience as if they were on site. We will continue to explore new ways of using Crystal LED to widely communicate AMADA’s advanced technological capabilities.