CNC Brand Profile

Hirochiku and the Company Named After a Furnace

Most companies are named after a founder, a place, or a word somebody liked. Hirochiku is named after a job. ?? is two characters: hiro, from Hirohata, the ward of Himeji where the steel mill is, and chiku, from chikuro, the trade of building and lining furnaces. Hirohata furnace building. Seventy-five years later the name still describes exactly what the company does, which is rarer than it sounds.

This is a brand profile, not a spec sheet. Hirochiku has never built a machine tool and never tried to. It sells one thing, heat, and it has spent three quarters of a century finding more places to sell it. Here is where the company came from, how a refractory crew at a steel mill ended up building the furnace that sits next to a die casting machine, what the HM-II actually is, and what to look at if one comes up for sale.

June 1950, in a Steel Town

The company's own history puts the founding in June 1950, in step with the reopening of the Hirohata works in Himeji. That is not incidental background. It is the entire founding event. A steel mill coming back to life needs its furnaces built and relined before it needs anything else, and that work is skilled, filthy, unglamorous and continuous. Refractory does not last. It cracks, it spalls, it wears, and somebody has to be there to tear it out and lay it again, campaign after campaign, for as long as the mill runs.

A company founded on that premise starts with a durable business and a narrow one. In August 1951 it changed its name to Hirohata Chikuro Kogyo and set up in Hirohata Ward, where the headquarters still sits today. For its first six years it was a contractor at a steel plant.

Refractory is the opposite of a growth business and the best kind of base. The lining always wears out. The mill always needs it back. A company that starts there is never chasing the next order, it is deciding what else to do with the crew between them.

From Relining Furnaces to Designing Them

March 1956 is the hinge. That is when Hirochiku set up a Technical Design Department and started designing and building plants rather than only maintaining them. It is a short line in a corporate timeline and it is the whole company. A crew that has torn out and rebuilt other people's furnaces for six years knows things the original designer did not: where the lining fails first, which access panel nobody can reach with a tool in their hand, what the thermal cycling does to a joint over five years. Turn that crew into a design department and you get furnaces designed by the people who have to fix them.

The exports followed quickly. A continuous heating furnace ordered for Thailand in December 1966, and after that Korea and Indonesia. A heating furnace to Qatar in June 1977. A walking beam furnace to South Korea in April 1978. In October 1968 the name was shortened to Hirochiku, which is the point at which a local contractor stops describing itself by the town it works in and starts being a brand.

1979, and the Turn Toward Aluminum

In April 1979 Hirochiku started selling HOLIMESY furnaces, and that is the line that leads directly to the machine on our floor. Steel furnaces are enormous, few, and sold to a handful of customers. Aluminum melting and holding furnaces are small, numerous, and sold to every die caster and foundry in the country. Same competence, completely different market, and a far larger number of buyers.

The line grew in both directions from there. In November 1995 they began marketing HOLIMESY across ASEAN. In June 1999 they exhibited at GIFA in Germany, which is the world foundry trade fair and not a place a domestic contractor bothers going. In between, February 1991, they took their first order for a large-scale vacuum furnace for fine ceramics, which is the same heat competence pointed at advanced materials instead of metal. The Asian subsidiaries followed the customers: Thailand in 2006, Indonesia in 2011, Vietnam in 2024.

What the HM-II Actually Is

HOLIMESY splits into two furnaces that get confused with each other. The HM-III, which Hirochiku calls the Harry Melter III, is the central melting furnace, the parent unit that feeds a plant. The HM-II, the Harry Melter II, is the at-machine unit, what the Japanese literature calls a ???, a furnace kept close at hand. It sits beside the die casting machine rather than across the building.

The design is two chambers working as one. A rapid-melt crucible section takes ingot and returns and turns them liquid, and an insulated holding chamber keeps that metal at temperature and ready. That is why the machines are described as melting and holding rather than one or the other, and it is what lets a cell run continuously instead of in batches. Hirochiku's own claim for the HM-II is resistance to aluminum wetting and a large reduction in oxidation loss, which in plain terms means less metal turning into dross and less of your purchased aluminum ending up skimmed off the top.

The two units currently on our floor are HM-II-300 models built in 2021, never installed and still crated. Published specifications put the melting rate at 661 pounds per hour and holding capacity at 2,204 pounds per chamber, with melting and holding burners each rated 15 x 104 kcal per hour, a holding range of 650 to 750 degrees C, a normal operating range of 680 to 720, and a maximum furnace temperature of 800.

One detail worth noticing. 661 pounds per hour is 300 kilograms per hour, and 2,204 pounds is 1,000 kilograms. The 300 in HM-II-300 reads as the melt rate in kilograms per hour, with a metric tonne of holding capacity per chamber. That is how most Japanese furnace lines are numbered and it makes sizing straightforward once you see it, though it is worth confirming against the builder's own sheet for any specific unit.

The Line in Shop Language

Hirochiku does not sell a furnace, it sells the hot half of a casting cell. The HOLIMESY catalog covers central melting furnaces, at-machine melting and holding furnaces, and a range of smaller hand furnaces in electric, immersion heater and gas radiation versions. Beyond the furnaces there are low-pressure casting furnaces in single and dual tank configurations, float-type constant level furnaces for precision pouring, and heat treatment furnaces in electric and gas for solution and aging work.

Then the metal handling that connects it all: launders, carriers, dust collectors, conveyors, and automated pouring carts. That last one is the most recent piece of real engineering in the line. Hirochiku began developing an automated pouring cart in 2016 and delivered the first unit in 2018, with automatic detection of residual metal so the cart knows what it is carrying. That is a labor problem being solved, not a thermal one, and it tells you where the company thinks the next decade of foundry spending goes.

Where Hirochiku Sits in the Market

The scale difference is the useful part. A representative Lindberg/MPH gas-fired unit is published at 13,700 pounds of holding capacity and 1,500 pounds per hour of melting, built with dual doors and dip wells to feed several die casting machines. The HM-II-300 holds 2,204 pounds per chamber and melts 661 pounds per hour. Those are not competing machines, they are different jobs. The Lindberg is a central furnace serving a row of presses. The HM-II is a furnace for one machine, or a small cell, kept close so the metal does not travel and lose temperature on the way. If you are running a large aluminum foundry, the American and German builders are the conversation. If you are standing up one or two die casting machines and you want the metal right there, the at-machine Japanese unit is the one that fits.

Why Used Hirochiku Furnaces Hold Value

A melting and holding furnace has no spindle, no ball screws, no control axes and no software to go obsolete. It is a steel shell, refractory lining, burners, a crucible or bath, insulation and temperature control. That is a short list of things to go wrong, and every one of them is a rebuildable item rather than a reason to scrap the machine. Refractory is consumable by design and gets replaced on a schedule anyway. Burners and controls are serviceable. A well-built furnace shell outlives several linings.

The specific case for Hirochiku on the used market is that the company is a furnace engineering firm rather than a badge, the HOLIMESY line has been in production since 1979 with a long installed base across Asia, and the at-machine size class is exactly what a shop adding a die casting cell needs. The honest constraint is support. This is a Japanese builder with Asian subsidiaries and no North American service network I can find, so parts, refractory specification and burner components need to be sourced thoughtfully and priced into the deal. Gas train and burner components are largely standard industrial parts rather than proprietary assemblies, which helps. A pair of 2021 units that were never installed sits outside all of this, because there is no lining wear, no thermal cycling history and no hours to discount.

What to Check When Buying a Used Melting and Holding Furnace

These are the inspections Resell CNC handles before a furnace moves, and they apply to any melter you are looking at, not only this one.

Refractory condition, everywhere you can see. Look for cracking, spalling, glazing and washed-out areas at the metal line and around the burner ports. Lining is the single largest cost item on a used furnace and the one most easily hidden by a cold, closed door.

Shell integrity and distortion. Check the outer shell for warping, bulging, weld cracking and hot spots that have discolored the steel. A distorted shell means the lining has failed before and the geometry may never come back true.

Crucible or bath condition. Inspect for cracks, erosion and dross buildup. Ask when it was last replaced and what alloy it ran, because a bath that has only ever seen clean primary is a different machine from one that ate contaminated scrap.

Burners, gas train and safety chain. Confirm burner condition on both the melting and holding sides, verify the flame safeguard and the interlocks function, and check that the gas train matches the pressure and fuel you actually have at your building.

Temperature control and thermocouples. Power it up if at all possible and verify the controller holds setpoint. Thermocouples drift and are cheap to replace, but a control system that will not regulate between 680 and 720 degrees is a real problem on a furnace whose entire job is holding temperature.

Insulation and outer surface temperature. On a running unit, a hot exterior is money leaving the building every hour. On a cold one, check insulation thickness and condition at the doors and around penetrations, which is where it degrades first.

Doors, seals and charging arrangement. Confirm doors seat and seal, check the lift mechanism, and make sure the charging setup matches how you actually feed metal, whether that is ingot, returns or both.

Fuel type and utility match. Gas-fired units are specified for a fuel and a supply pressure. Confirm what the furnace was built for against what you have, since converting a burner package is not trivial and imported units are frequently specified for something other than North American natural gas service.

Ventilation, exhaust and permitting. A gas-fired melter needs flue arrangements and may need local air permitting. Sort that before the machine arrives, not after.

Documentation and crating condition. Ask for manuals, refractory specification, burner data and wiring diagrams, and on a never-installed unit confirm the crating with photographs and check for storage corrosion. Sitting still is easy on a furnace, but only if it sat dry.

Who Runs These

Aluminum die casters first and foremost, particularly shops running one or a few machines where a central melter would be overkill and the metal needs to be close. Gravity and permanent mold foundries doing aluminum work. Job shops adding a casting cell rather than a whole foundry. Captive operations inside a larger manufacturer, where a product line needs its own castings and nobody wants to build a melt department around it. The common thread is scale. Two thousand pounds of holding capacity is a working cell, not a plant, and that is exactly the shop the HM-II is aimed at.

Resell CNC Take

Furnaces are the most overlooked line item in a die casting cell and the one that decides whether the rest of it runs. Everybody prices the casting machine, most people remember the trim press, and then somebody works out that the metal has to arrive hot and consistent or none of it matters. We are seeing that cell come apart and move right now, which is why a pair of never-installed 2021 Hirochiku melters and a set of Koei trim presses are on our floor at the same time. If you are standing up aluminum casting, buying the hot end and the finishing end together out of one liquidation is a much better trade than assembling it a machine at a time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Hirochiku?

Hirochiku Co., Ltd. is a Japanese industrial furnace engineering company headquartered in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture. Founded in June 1950 as a furnace-building contractor at the Hirohata steelworks, it designs, builds, installs and maintains industrial furnaces across steel, non-ferrous metals, heat treatment and advanced materials, and has sold aluminum melting and holding equipment under the HOLIMESY brand since 1979. The company reports 425 employees and revenue of 13.3 billion yen for the fiscal year ending March 2026.

What is the difference between the Hirochiku HM-II and HM-III?

Both are HOLIMESY aluminum furnaces and they serve different positions in the plant. The HM-III, called the Harry Melter III, is a central melting furnace, the parent unit that supplies metal to a facility. The HM-II, the Harry Melter II, is an at-machine melting and holding furnace designed to sit next to the casting machine, combining a rapid-melt section with an insulated holding chamber so a cell can run continuously.

What does the number in HM-II-300 mean?

It reads as the melting rate in kilograms per hour. Published specifications for the HM-II-300 give a melting rate of 661 pounds per hour, which is 300 kilograms per hour, and a holding capacity of 2,204 pounds per chamber, which is one metric tonne. Model numbering by metric melt rate is common on Japanese furnace lines, though the figure should be confirmed against the builder's specification for any particular unit.

Does Hirochiku build CNC machines?

No. Hirochiku is an industrial furnace and thermal engineering company, not a machine tool builder. Its equipment sits alongside machine tools in a casting or heat treatment operation rather than cutting metal itself, covering melting, holding, pouring, heat treatment and the metal handling between them.

What temperature does an aluminum holding furnace run at?

For die casting alloys, holding temperature typically sits in the range of roughly 650 to 750 degrees C, with a narrower normal band in operation. The Hirochiku HM-II-300 is published with a holding range of 650 to 750 degrees C, a normal operating range of 680 to 720, and a maximum furnace temperature of 800. Holding too hot increases oxidation and hydrogen pickup, and holding too cold risks cold shuts and misruns in the casting.

Is a used aluminum melting and holding furnace worth buying?

Often yes, because the machine is simple in the ways that matter. There is no spindle, no positioning axes and no control software to go obsolete, and the main wear item, refractory lining, is a scheduled consumable rather than a failure. The value hinges on lining condition, shell integrity and the burner and control package, so those need real inspection. On an imported unit, confirm the fuel type and supply pressure match your building and price parts sourcing into the deal.