Ohki Brass & Copper Expands Output Capacity at Niiza Plant

Ohki Brass & Copper, Japanese major maker of copper alloy products, announced on Monday it will establish a new building for copper billet production at Niiza plant in Saitama Prefecture, Japan in 2006. The firm plans to introduce a coreless induction furnace and a casting furnace with electromagnetic mixing machine in the new building, in order to produce special alloys such as high strength brass and new alloys. The firm will also renew a drawing machine at the plant and improve the productivity of middle-sized bar. The firm totally invests around 500 million yen for the equipment expansion. The firm aims high quality and quick delivery of the outputs by the reinforcement.Ohki Brass & Copper will construct the new building in 900 square meters area at Niiza plant in May 2006. The building will have a coreless induction furnace with 1,500 kilowatts per hour of melting rate and a casting furnace with electromagnetic mixing machine. The firm plans to start the commercial billet production in mid June after test running. The firm will be able to produce all billets with electromagnetic mixing machine by this investment.The new building will be located next to the existent building where billets are mass-produced in order to improve the productivity of the plant. The firm chose a coreless conduction furnace, which is suitable for many items production with small-lot, instead of a channel conduction furnace. The new casting furnace can produce 2 different sized billets at the same time, 150 and 200 millimeters diameter. The firm aims to halve the delivery lead time from present 2 weeks by these improvements.The firm will introduce a new drawing machine in August 2006 and start the operation in early September. The firm renews one of 11 drawing machines at Niiza plant. The new machine is specialized for middle-sized bar drawing, which can draw out round bar with 15-30 millimeters diameter, hexagonal bar with 11-26 millimeters diameter and square bar with 10-21 millimeters diameter, while the old machine is specialized for 8-12 millimeters diameter bar. The drawing speed will become 1.5 times faster after the renewal and contribute to the shorter lead time to delivery, though the output capacity won’t change.