Trusted Industry Leader

Mission Statement

Harmonic Drive’s mission is to provide motion control solutions that give our customers a competitive advantage. To accomplish this we continually invest in the growth of our employees and in our company’s capabilities.

What we do

Harmonic Drive LLC engineers and manufactures precision servo actuators, gearheads and gear component sets. We work closely with both Fortune 500 and companies of all sizes to understand their application requirements and provide a standard or, in most cases, a custom-engineered solution to enable the success of their design project. Since the beginning, our engineering and production teams have continued to develop enabling technologies and products for the evolving motion control market.

Our dedicated, full-service engineering department truly partners with our customers. We love challenges, and work to provide realistic, timely solutions. Experienced application engineers with expertise in motion control are available to assist you with your concept and detailed designs. Our engineering design service is provided free of charge in most cases. We love what we do and are eager to share our knowledge and passion with our customers.

Harmonic Drive strain wave gear and actuator products are customizable. Our design engineers are tenacious when it comes to providing the absolute best possible solution for your specific project. We pride ourselves on delivering cost-effective, high precision solutions.

The majority of the products sold by Harmonic Drive LLC are proudly made at our manufacturing facility in Massachusetts, USA. We are ISO 9001 and AS9100 registered. Harmonic Drive Group Companies in Japan (Harmonic Drive Systems, Inc.) and Germany (Harmonic Drive SE) provide additional products. We have shared core values, product designs and quality standards. State of the art manufacturing facilities in the US, Japan and Germany enables us to locally serve the needs of our global customers.

With over 60 years of experience, we are very proud of our outstanding company history. Our high-precision, zero-backlash Harmonic Drive® strain wave gears and Harmonic Planetary® gears have, and continue to play critical roles in robotics, spaceflight applications, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, factory automation equipment, medical diagnostics and surgical robotics.

How we began

The unique principle of the strain wave gear was based on a brand new concept. The mechanism was the brainchild of the genius American inventor C. Walton Musser. Mr. Musser was a brilliant inventor who was awarded more than 200 patents, in a wide range of fields going even beyond his specialty in mechanical engineering to include also physics, chemistry, and biology. Prior to his invention of the harmonic gear, efforts to achieve greater speed and accuracy in gear mechanisms for conveying driving power and motion were focused solely on making the gear mechanism more rigid. The principle of harmonic gearing by contrast was to make use of the flexibility of metal and apply elastic dynamics. Since this method of conveying motive power turned conventional wisdom on its head, it suddenly became the object of worldwide interest.

Two companies then stepped forward to commercializing this concept. One was the U.S. company United Shoe Machinery Corporation (USM), the forerunner of Harmonic Drive LLC and the other was the Japanese company, Hasegawa Gear Works, Ltd., the forerunner of Harmonic Drive Systems Inc. Today, high precision Harmonic Drive® gears continue to be manufactured by Harmonic Drive LLC, Harmonic Drive SE and Harmonic Drive Systems, Inc.