Kitamura Machinery has announced its partnership with W.D. Hearn as the new exclusive distributor for the sales and service of Kitamura products in South Africa.

Family owned and operated, Kitamura Machinery has been developing state-of-the-art machine tools since 1933. Machining centre manufacture became the company’s mainstay in 1971 as the company saw growth in this segment for future generations. Today, as a result of Kitamura’s original technologies and a reputation for high reliability, Kitamura has a full line of CNC vertical, horizontal and 5-Axis machining centres sold to a customer base in 52 countries worldwide.

Kitamura’s commitment to Research and Development has led to industrial growth with the procurement of over 200 patents and patents pending in machining center design. These include Kitamura’s own CNC control system platform. The company also boasts that it has the world’s fastest rapid feedrates of 60mpm on solid box ways.

“We felt that the Kitamura machines were the perfect fit for our customer’s requirements in the range of products offered,” said Ray Cooper, MD of W.D Hearn.

“Kitamura has a broad line of horizontal machining centres (from 250mm pallet to one metre) that can each be equipped with live hydraulic fixtures if desired. In addition Kitamura manufactures several models of pallet changing vertical machining centres that are great products for our production machining customers,” continued Cooper.

“Since the company was established in 1937, W.D. Hearn has been providing high quality machine tools and automation solutions for the metalworking industry. In 1987 we sold our first CNC machining centre and have since installed over 1000 machines countrywide.”

“Besides machining centres Kitamura also manufactures a range of CNC bridge mills and jig borers. Kitamura also offers a variety of systems and cells tailored to fit any type of machining application.”

A recent introduction by the company has been the Kitamura Mycenter 4XT 5-axis machining centre with an integrated trunnion table. Featuring a work envelope of 800 by 610 by 510mm in X, Y and Z, an A-axis tilt travel of -42 to +120°, and a 0 to 260° rotational C-axis, the Mycenter 4XT features a solid box guideway configuration that incorporates a four-slideway base construction design.

The machine features a dual contact spindle (BT40) with a speed range from 20 to 15,000 rpm and 26 kW power output.

Rapids of 36 m/min operate in the X, Y and Z axes, with cutting feed rates of 10 m/min. This speed is possible for 4+1 axis machining with a rapid feed on the A and C axes of 4,800 and 8,000 deg/min respectively. The 30-tool ATC can change tools in 2.5 seconds.

W.D Hearn provides installation, training, applications, warranty and after warranty service on machine tools of all kinds. W.D Hearn offers single source manufacturing solutions for a wide range of industries including high speed machining for the die mould industry, automotive, production machining and provides tool room equipment sales.

In the past 12 months W.D Hearn has officially signed agreements with Tornos who have a niche of Swiss type lathes and multi spindle machines, Starrett who manufacture precision measuring tools and equipment, Sisma who provide laser sources and systems for welding, marking, 3-D and cutting, Nikon Metrology who supply portable measuring and articulated arms amongst other optical inspection and mechanical 3D metrology solutions complemented with vision measuring instruments, Flow waterjet systems for the Eastern and Western Cape, Renishaw and recently Mitsubishi EDM and WEDM.

W.D Hearn has fully fledged branches in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town that are able to offer virtually the full spectrum of technology involved in metal removal, from high end equipment to accommodating those companies that prefer to be more cautious in their capital spend.

For further details contact W.D. Hearn on TEL: 021 534 5351 or visit www.wdhearn.co.za