Draft:Hokushin Seiki

• Comment: You have not proven notability. Your job is to show by reference ng that it passes WP:NCORP
  Patent and trademark registrations are not useful for referencing. Anyone can register these, just by supplying the fee.
  Blogs are useless, as are instruction manuals. 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 11:08, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

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Hokushin Seiki Co., Ltd. (株式会社 北伸精器)

Company type	Kabushiki-gaisha (Joint-Stock Company)
Industry	Metalworking
Founded	September 1913
Headquarters	Sengoku, Tokyo, Japan
Key people	Katsuaki Kitajima (北島 克昭), Representative Ikuo Kitajima (北島 郁男), Manager
Number of employees	60 (2023)

Hokushin Seiki Co., Ltd. with its two production facilities in Saku is Japan's largest manufacturer of airbrushes.

History

Yukichi Kitajima (北島 雄吉), born on September 15, 1887 in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, founded the company Kitajima Seisakusho (北島 製作所) in September 1913. In the same year, he designs and manufactures Japan's first paint sprayer. As a pioneer in the field of atomization technology, he moved to Tokyo in 1943 and combined his knowledge of the mechanical atomization of liquids with the production of medical instruments. He produced his first prototypes by hand in his workshop in Tokyo. The address is still the company's headquarters today. His ideas and prototypes are groundbreaking in both areas, medical applicators and paint sprayers. He died in Tokyo in 1954 at the age of 67. Two years later, in 1956, his eldest son Toshikazu Kitajima (北島 利一) transferred the Kitajima Seisakusho to the Hokushin Seiki Kabushiki-gaisha as part of the Subcontract Act and opened the first factory in Saku.

At the production facility in Saku, Nagano, the company is now concentrating on the manufacture of paint sprayers, known as airbrushes, and small diaphragm compressors under the brand name Rich.

The brand name Rich comes from an alternative interpretation of the name Toshikazu. The logograms for Toshikazu are read in kanji as 利 (toshi) and 一 (kazu); in the Chinese script Hànzì, from which the Japanese kanji originates, however, as 利 (lì) and 一 (yī) romanized and therefore pronounced "Rii chi". The company patented the brand name Rich in its Japanese spelling (リッチ) in February 1965. The romanized Rich lettering in an oval, which is still used today, was not registered for trademark protection until 10 years later, in July 1975. Due to increasing demand for OEM production, mainly for the company Olympos Airbrush (オリンポス 株式会社) and others, the production facility in Saku, Nagano expands enormously.

Following the patent protection of the Richcon trademark for compressors in January 1978, the company B. B.Rich (株) ビービーリッチ was founded at the same location and the company name was also protected as a trademark.

The prefix "B.B.", just like the name "Rich", is also due to an interpretation. As an airbrush is usually called "(paint) spray gun", the size of the muzzle, the nozzle of the airbrush, was interpreted as a caliber. The caliber (shotgun size) "B.B." has a size of 0.18 (inch). The nozzle size of 0.18 mm derived from this is a widely used standard for paint spray guns today.

In addition to nozzle sizes, the company also sets standards in the designation of various versions of the paint spray guns. Hokushin Seiki established the designations HP for Hand Piece and GP for Gun Piece. Hand Piece refers to the classic form of a so-called airbrush, which looks similar to a pen, while Gun Piece refers to a type of paint sprayer similar to a spray gun.

While the model designations of the classic airbrushes (until the mid-1970s Hand Piece No.1, No.2 and No.3; later HP-A, -B and -C) stand for the type and quantity of material feed, the model designations of the smaller spray guns, the Gun Pieces, generally reflect the nozzle size, e.g. "GP-35" for a spray gun with a 0.35 mm nozzle.

Airbrush models and features

Old model	Current model	Material supply	Material quantity
Hand Piece No.1	HP-A	paint tray	approx. 1 ml
Hand Piece No.2	HP-B	gravity-feed paint cup	approx. 2.5 ml
Hand Piece No.3	HP-C	gravity-feed paint cup	approx. 5 ml

Another characteristic feature of Hokushin Seiki airbrushes is the batch number, which consists of two letters.

Example: "LA" = L: 2011, A: January

Assignment of the batch numbers

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	J	K	L	M
year			2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
	P	R	S	T	U	W	X	Y	Z	A	B	C
year	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
month

In the early 2000s, the company expanded into a second production facility, roughly 3 miles from its first production facility, also in Saku, Nagano.

Corporate headquarters: 4-chōme-33-10 Sengoku, Bunkyo City, Tokyo 112-0011, Japan
First production facility (佐久工場): 1438-8 Tomono, Saku, Nagano 385-0061, Japan
Second production facility (佐久工場 サイド2): 3400-24 Nakagomi, Saku, Nagano 385-0051, Japan
Corporate headquarters of B.B.Rich: 1445-7 Tomono, Saku, Nagano 385-0061, Japan

Brands

Rich
The company sells its first paint sprayers under the brand name Rich and develops its models with airbrush artists such as Hideo Mori and Masamitsu Tsuboi, as well as in cooperation with the company Fuso Seiki Co., Ltd. continues steadily .

Richcon
The company produced mobile diaphragm compressors until the mid-1990s and brought them onto the market under the name Richcon. The models KS-707, KS-708 or KS-1003G are very popular in the hobby sector, but are later replaced on the market by oil-free piston compressors that are comparable in price but significantly more powerful.

RichPen
The RichPen brand, even if the name suggests it, is not a brand of Hokushin Seiki, but of Fuso Seiki Co., Ltd. (扶桑精機株式会社), a manufacturer of automatic paint guns. The company is one of the longest-standing ODM customers and is the only one to also offer Rich brand paint sprayers on its website.

B.B.Rich
On the one hand, paint sprayers are sold under the B.B.Rich brand, and on the other hand, since the subsidiary was founded, all patents for designs and technical developments, which can also be found in ODM production, have been registered for it.

ODM

Hokushin Seiki has been the Original Design Manufacturer of the largest Japanese airbrush suppliers for over 60 years and, with its innovations in design and technology, continues to significantly advance the development of the airbrush to this day. This is how inventions like the airbrush without a handle, the self-centering plug-in nozzle or the finger groove has been an integral part of the product portfolios of its major customers for years.

Unlike the companies ANEST IWATA-Medea, Inc. or Mr. Hobby (GSI Creos Corp.) Tamiya names B.B. Rich as the manufacturer of its airbrushes.

The most well-known model, the iwata HP-C, which was released for the first time as Hand Piece No. 3 under the label of the subcontractor association I.H.S. available from 1963, is released in 2013 under the name “IWATA 50th Anniversary HP-C Limited Edition” reissued limited to 1000 pieces.

References

[[:Category:Companies of Japan]] [[:Category:Saku, Nagano]] [[:Category:1913 establishments]] [[:Category:Metalworking]]