Hurco Europe Ltd

  Making European debuts, two new machining centres and two CNC lathes will be on the stand of Hurco Europe this year at MACH, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the company's formation.

RST Engineering, a subcontractor of EDM (electric discharge machining) 20 years ago decided that the manual-tool-change Hurco Hawk was the best CNC milling machine to take over from hand-operated mills for manufacturing copper electrodes, jigs and fixtures, due to the ease of shop floor programming on its twin-screen control system.

Hurco plan to present machining solutions for both simple and complex components at the Southern Manufacturing show, taking place in Farnborough 6th-8th February. David Waghorn, Managing Director of High Wycombe-based Hurco Europe stated: "A modern-day subcontract engineering business must focus on the immediate order book, but at the same time has to keep an eye on the future. It is essential to be as flexible as possible and to be able to advance seamlessly to the next level of technology."

A seventh 5-axis machining centre has been installed at Preston-based, tier-2 aerospace subcontractor, TGM, primarily to cope with increasing volumes of Airbus A350 work. Two years ago, each month the firm was delivering four port and starboard aircraft wing sets comprising 20 parts each, whereas today 10 sets per month are required and the number will climb further over the next two years.

Producing sheet metal components, pressings and fabrications in quantities from prototypes up to 10,000 per year, PAB Coventry has since early 2016 invested £1.5m in new machine tools, including a Hurco vertical machining centre. The rest consists of another hydraulic press, and a 4kW flat-bed fibre laser cutting machine, a 4kW 5-axis laser cutting machine and a 2m press brake, all from Prima Power.

  A subcontract machining firm has been set up near Coventry to undertake small batch manufacture and project work that other subcontractors and OEMs may consider a nuisance, as they interrupt production. Called Overstone Engineering, the company is owned by Richard Dunn, who has 40 years’ subcontract engineering experience.

Partnering up and working together, honing specialists Bates Technologies and machine tool manufacturer Hurco have developed a high precision honing process that can be carried out on standard machining centres. Benefits include cost reductions compared with purchasing and operating a dedicated honing machine; and the ability to combine general machining with honing on the same platform, eliminating a separate setup.

Sheffield contract machining firm Ian Cocker Engineering, for the later part of its career, has relied on almost only Hurco vertical machining centres to produce prismatic components, mainly for the oil and gas sector and frequently from difficult materials such as stainless steel and Inconel.

It seems it is never too late to become a business man, as Brian Yates, a machinist since he left school and latterly a manager in a subcontracting firm, decided in October 2010 at the age of 55 to start his own business, Campro Precision. He invested his entire pension fund in renting premises and purchasing two Hurco machine tools, a 3-axis VM20 vertical machining centre and a TM8 CNC lathe.

Showcasing the simplicity of operation in the new Max 5 control for all types of machining operations is Hurco. The CNC system, which runs the latest WinMax software, is intended for graphical, menu-based, conversational programming but is equally capable of handling NC code.

A busy open house event in High Wycombe in December, and its immediate aftermath saw Hurco Europe take orders for 12 vertical machining centres to the value of £800,000. The company welcomed 70 engineers from 50 manufacturing companies from the OEM and subcontracting sectors during the two-day show.

The rail and engineering divisions of Jones Nuttall provides subcontract manufacturing and overhaul services. Multiple materials including tough metal alloys and plastics undergo machining, forming, profiling, fabrication, welding, painting, assembly and test. 

Increasing its stock of Hurco machining centres to seven, toolmaking and subcontract CNC machining manufacturer DSM-NE, Newton Aycliffe is including a large 3-axis model and an even bigger 5-axis machine, the company’s first, which was installed in October last year (2015).

As the years have progressed so has the vertical-spindle VM1 from Hurco. Its entry-level machining centre has evolved into the more capable VM10 and the manufacturer has continued to improve the specification. Linear travels have been extended, a larger tool changer is provided, spindle speed and rapid traverse are both faster, and a spindle chiller and through-spindle coolant have been added.

Having made its world debut at EMO in Milan last October, the new Hurco VCX600i vertical-spindle, 5-axis machining centre will be exhibited for the first time in the UK at MACH 2016. Built in Italy for the European market, the highly productive, travelling-column model is another example of the manufacturer’s policy of providing maximum metalcutting capacity in a compact footprint.

Having introduced a pair of twin-column, bridge-type, vertical-spindle machining centres in 2009, Hurco Europe has now added a third, much larger model, the DCX42i. The 51 tonne machine has a 4.2 metre X-axis travel, plus 2.6 metres in Y and 1.1 metres in Z, providing a working volume nearly double that of the next model down, the DCX32i, and more than four times that of the DCX 22i.

For most UK workshops, space is at a premium. With this in mind, Hurco Europe will be showing a VM10i CNC vertical machining centre and a TM6i CNC lathe at this year’s Southern Manufacturing Exhibition. The two machines represent the most compact of Hurco’s offerings, whilst clearly demonstrating that a huge amount of flexible productivity can be derived from a small space on a shop floor due to the space-efficient design of these and other Hurco machine tools.

Bowtech Products was established 22 years ago as an importer of products used for underwater applications, but now designs and manufactures its own equipment. Exports currently account for two-thirds of turnover, which has helped to double the size of the business over the last five years and was one of the reasons for the company winning the Subsea UK Global Export Award 2012, sponsored by Scottish Enterprise.

A record number of people visited Hurco's 250 square metre stand at MACH 2012, the company's largest to date. Contacts were logged from 549 companies, an increase of 24 per cent over MACH 2010. It continues a trend of visitor growth of more than 20 per cent per show since 2002 and is in line with Hurco's growth in turnover and customer base over the past decade.

Parts for instrumentation used in space observation, both terrestrial and satellite-based, are machined to tight tolerances on two Hurco vertical machining centres (VMCs) at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), near Didcot.