The company was founded in 1898, as the Okuma Noodle Machine Co., to manufacture and sell noodle-making machines. Eiichi Okuma, the founder of the original company, was working on how to make udon more effectively. He was using lathe to make "sticks", that has an important role in cutting the udon noodle. But the lathes used in those days in Japan were of poor precision. This was one of bigreasons which convinced Okuma to start making machine tools. In 1918 Eiichi establishedOkuma Machinery Works Ltd. and started selling the OS lathe. Okuma is a machine toolbuilder with a history of more than 100 years. Lathes were the main product category in the early days of company. The line now includes many CNC machine tools, including lathes, machining centers, multitasking machines, and grinding machines. Okuma's Double-Column Machining Center has a large market share in Japan.
Most machine tool builders source their CNC controls from partners such as Fanuc, Mitsubishi Electric, Siemens, and Heidenhain. Several builders have developed their own CNC controls over the years, but Okuma is unusual among machine tool builders for the degree to which it designs and builds all of its own hardware, software, and machine components. This is the company's "Single Source" philosophy. Okuma's CNC control is called the "OSP" series. It offers closed-loop positioning via its absolute position feedback system. The "OSP" name began as an abbreviation for "Okuma Sampling Pathcontrol". In an industry that pushes hard for continual technological innovation, Okuma has often been an innovative leader. For example, it has been among the leaders of development for thermal compensation and collision avoidance. Thermal compensation is designing the machine elements and control to minimize the dimensional distortion that results from the heat generated by machining. This is done both by preventing heat buildup and by detecting and compensating for temperature rises when they occur. Collision avoidance is designing the machine to predict and prevent interference, for example, having the machine "know" the form and location of all fixturing so that it can foresee a crash and stop its own movement before crashing. Recent innovation includes technology to avoid chatter, both by predicting and preventing it and by early automatic detection and correction when it does occur.
