Experiences with Hurco

[KJS]

I was just curious if anyone out there had any experiences running Hurco VMC's. Please share both good and bad stories. We are considering buying one for tool room use. Thanks for any and all feedback!

[Jammer™]

Lots of expierence here. Stay away!!! There are alot of better machines for the money out there. Although they are user friendly, the quality of the machine seems to go away much faster than most other machines. What kind of machining will you be doing on it?

[Müřlıń®]

OUch......Hurco......makes my fingers hurt just thinking about punching a paper tape......

 

****Flashbacks from the 70's*****

 

 

Well, thats how long its been since I was on a Hurco....heh

 

 

Murlin

[maestro]

We have 3 Hurco BMC30's Hurco Hawk knee mills. The Bmc 30's have done an admiral job here over the past 8 or 9 years. There have been a few maintenance issues, 1 spindle, one drive motor, and a few misc electronics issues over those years, but we have also replaced 2 spindle drives on an Okuma mill and one spindle drive on an Okuma lathe in the last 6 months at the tune od 10 grand a pop. I haven't seen any machine tool builder with a prefect maintenance record. These machines have made us a ton of money over the years as have our Okumas and Fadals. Each has it's own strong points and weakpoints. The controls on these machines are about as easy to use as you will find. We run them in conversational mode most of the time an the guys on the shop floor do most of thre own programming. I also use Mastercam to prom them in NC mode and althoug a little cumbersome in NC mode the can get the job done. Nice horsepower and torgue for the money and a pretty accruate machine as well. Are thee some with more horsepower and better accruacy, sure. How fast do you want to go, it's kind of like race cars, how much do you want to spend? I have bee try to get our company in a highspeed HMC or 5 axis maxhine for a few years now but the high initial investment seems to deter the present corporate management. So I make the best of the resources provided. Sometimes I think it comes down to the talents an ablities of the programmers and machinists to get the most out of whatever the powers that be provide. Anyway, overall we have hade decent resuts from our Hurcos here.

[Tony]

The thing I like about are Hurcos the most lately

is when someone brings me something I can say

"Come on ,You can do that yourself"

[beav700]

I would buy older Hurco anyday but not the new once.

I worked in two shops with most machine being Hurcos. The older machines that were made in Indianapolis US are still in my opinion the best US build Machines for the money. Very rigid with replaceable vertical gibbs that you can adjust and replace your self making the repairrebuild a snap. The new machines however are absolute junk. They are made in China (not somewhat good quality Taiwan). Hurco claims that they have their own manufacturing facility in China that produce these machines. The truth is that some other Chinese company builds those machines, loads them on the ship which arrives in sunny California where Hurco puts their name on the covers and the back door. They just glue blue stickers with Hurco logos. The last shop I worked for purchased two of them. One arrived completely rusted (ball screws and linear ways) and the other had nothing but problems from the getco. I saw Hurco guy more in the shop then the guy who was running the machine. The rusted machine was ruining somewhat OK for three months, then the spindle went out. Hurco was blaming us for runnig the machine at max 10.000 RPM for too long without the optional spindle cooler that we didn't buy. If the machine needs the cooler to run at 10,000 RPM then you make it a standard feature or you lower the spindle RPM. Later we ended up buying the spindle cooler and Hurco agreed to replace the spindle at half the cost.

The other machines Z axis was moving 0.008 with minimum side loads (big guy pushing on the tool holder). X axis had .005-.006 backlash on the screw. How the hell do you get that much backlash on the new screw. The Hurco guy came in and made adjustments in the control to compensate for the backlash. I tried to argue with Hurco to replace the screw but didn't get anywhere. So now we had new machine with .008 play in the Z and .006 in X. Even after the adjustments in the controller, we were unable to mill good circle. Had Easter eggs for all circular holes so we had to bore all holes with .002 tolerances with a boring head. Y screw was also screwed up. No matter how much screw mapping they did it was always off. The first 12" of travel would be within .0003 and the next 12" would be .002 off. I believe that the screws used in the new Hurco machines are made in some Chinese sweat shop on the manual grinder. The quality of the screws are terrible. Overall all the other components in the machine were somewhat functioning. The spindle noise was way to loud compare to the older 10,000 rpm Hurcos. The control for conversational programming is what hurco does best so there is no other control that comes close. The only problem is that we didn't really need it since we were using MasterCam. Last I heard, the Hurco agreed to replace the X screw with was litlle better. Don't know if they had any more problem with those machines but the first year they were always broken.

[KJS]

Thanks for the responses. Our work for the new machine would consist of light machining of tool steel. We do do some graphite milling. We're looking at smaller VMC'c. One more question, if you had a $45,000 budget for a new VMC, what would you buy? Thanks again.

[chris m]

I don't know what the Haas VF2SS is going for right now but it can't be too much more that that.

 

12K Spindle, sick-fast rapids, lots of memory available, plug-and-play 4th axis.

 

These machines are pretty sweet for the $$

 

C

[gcode]

quote:

---

if you had a $45,000 budget for a new VMC, what would you buy?

---

Haas

[Code_Breaker]

I echo gcode's response. Used many different type of machine, unfortunately, in this shop there are no Haas.

[Jack Mitchell]

I wont name names, but a client in Fort Erie Ontario was so impressed with Hurco support for a propietary part that he threatened to peal the control off and replace it with a Centurion.

He didn't bluff - I saw this travesty with my own eyes.

Lets hope he does'nt brutalize the M32 control on the VQC15-40 pallet changer as well.

 

 

Regards, Jack

[Tony]

Jack so true...

When something Gets fixed in there o/s

With there next upgrade.

You will then lose something !

The manual jog is now liquid smooth....

But now Recovery restart doesnt work anymore!

Next patch mmmmm 6 months from now!

[crazy^millman]

Well I would buy a machine that is going to give you the best bang for your buck. We just got a HAAS VF2 SS and VF4 SS and well you will pry them out of my cold dead hands for the money. I got one with a 4th axis that will work on both. I have jobs that I was runnign on another machine that will go unmentioned at this point that where taken on average 50% to 150% longer.

 

Educate yourself on the things you et wit ha machine get things in writting and do your homework. Ask them to give you numbers of 4 shops tht like the machine and 2 shops that don't. The last I have yet to have any dealer do but I always ask anyway. Give them a part to make a part you have run for a while if you have one. Then who ever else you choose for a machine then go from there. I will tell you this nothing liek a 1.6 second tool change and 1400 ipm rapids to help get those jobs done. Thanks 2 our 2 HAAS Machine we got a $40,000 job done in 10 days for one of our customers.

 

CRazy Millman