Mechanical motion control component maker HIWIN Technologies has obtained orders that will keep its production capacity fully occupied until second-quarter 2018, according to company chairman Eric Chuo.

Fast growing demand for industrial automation has resulted in increasing demand for ball screws and linear guideways, Chuo said Wednesday, speaking at Taipei International Industrial Automation Exhibition, which is running from September 6-9.

Due to the tight capacity, the time for delivery to fulfill orders has prolonged to 4-6 months for ball screws, 4-8 months for linear guideways and about four months for single-axis robots, Chuo noted. For HIWIN, the most important is to make the most efficient allocation of production capacity, Chuo indicated.

While HIWIN has offered medical robots for use by Show Chwan Memorial Hospital in cholecystectomy, a few other hospitals will soon use such robots in surgery and another 3-4 are talking with HIWIN about adopting them. In addition, HIWIN has shipped robots for rehabilitation of disabled lower limbs to Kaohsiug Medical University in southern Taiwan and cooperated with China Medical University in central Taiwan to develop robots for oral cancer surgery.