2026 Korea Gear Technology Tour
Getting to South Korea from Chicago is a 14-hour flight, and you land the next calendar day. It's a long way to go, and it was worth it.
We made the journey to SIMTOS 2026, the Seoul International Manufacturing Technology Show, held at KINTEX in Goyang, just outside the city. More than one million square feet of floor space, over 1,300 exhibitors from 35 countries, and most booths running machines with parts being cut in real time. It's a serious show, and it draws a serious crowd. A full day on the floor and you still feel like you missed something.
For American gear manufacturers, SIMTOS is one of the few places to see Korean gear-cutting and power-skiving technology operating at scale before it arrives stateside. Reading a spec sheet doesn't come close. Several of our customers joined us for the trip for exactly that reason.
But we didn't fly 14 hours just for the trade show.
SIMTOS and the YG Tech booth
Our first stop was the YG Tech booth, where the team hosted us for a welcome reception. YG Tech is Helios's manufacturing partner for the Hera line of CNC gear hobbing machines and NEOPS power skiving machines. Seeing their presence at a show this size, with machines running and their engineering team on hand, reinforces why the partnership works. We spent time going through process and performance details with their engineers, the kind of conversation that's hard to replicate over email.
For the customers who came with us, the booth visit was a chance to meet the people behind the machines and ask questions directly.
Seoul
We had a full day in Seoul before heading south to Daegu for technical tours.
Gyeongbokgung Palace in the morning, a royal palace more than 600 years old, sitting at the base of the mountains with the modern city rising up right behind it. Then Jogyesa Temple, a Buddhist temple in the middle of the city. That evening, Myeongdong, where the streets are packed with people and street food vendors, and you can eat your way down several blocks without running out of options.
Daegu
The KTX train from Seoul to Daegu runs in under two hours. Daegu is where YG Tech is headquartered. We got in, had dinner, and went bowling with the group, a good way to settle in before the technical tours. The next day was the core of the trip.
YG Tech factory tour and technical training
Walking the factory floor tells you things a spec sheet can't. You see how the Hera and NEOPS machines are assembled, where tolerances are held, and how the team approaches quality at each stage of the build. Pre-acceptance run-offs happen here, too. When a customer orders a machine, it's run and verified in Daegu before it ships to North America. Gear Headquarters made that same trip for their own machine acceptance before installation, and the run-off helped their team get up to speed quickly when production started.
For customers on the trip, seeing where your machine was built and who built it changes how you think about the equipment.
The technical training sessions with the YG Tech engineering team covered machine design, application parameters, and troubleshooting in depth. That knowledge comes back with us and shows up in the support we can give customers once a machine is on their floor.
Sangshin and Dongyang
We visited two production facilities in the Daegu area, both running Hera hobbing machines in fully automated production. Sangshin produces gearing for power tools in a tight, high-volume operation. Dongyang is a tier-1 automotive supplier. High volume, no margin for variation, and the machines doing exactly what they're supposed to as part of a larger automated line. Seeing Hera machines running at that level gives our customers a real benchmark for how the equipment performs at scale.
What we took home
The trip covered a lot of ground: a major international trade show, the factory floor where our machines are built, technical training with the engineering team, two production facilities running those machines in demanding applications, and a day in Seoul.
The quality in the Hera and NEOPS lines starts in Daegu. Seeing that firsthand and spending time with the YG Tech team makes us better at supporting customers back home. That's why we make the trip, and sharing the entire experience with our customers, from the food to the factory floor, makes it that much better.
Interested in learning more about the Hera line? Contact our team or schedule a conversation.
Watch the full video recap of our South Korea trip.
