Hurco Companies, Inc., has chosen the Performance Racing Industry trade show as the venue to unveil the company’s new CNC Honing feature. Engineers from Hurco and Bates Technologies worked together to implement stroke honing and air gauging for one of Hurco’s Fortune 500 customers earlier this year and the company is now offering this capability to other customers.
The ability to expand the flexibility of the CNC machine to perform honing operations eliminates the need for dedicated CNC honing machines. The Hurco VMX42i, considered the workhorse of the industry, will be used to demonstrate CNC honing. The VMX42i has X/Y/Z travels of 42” x 24” x 24”, a dual-wound 12,000 RPM spindle that provides more torque at a lower base speed without requiring a gearbox, a wider table that extends across the entire Y-axis and moves completely forward in the work cube for easy operator access, and a 30-station swing-arm ATC.
Other demonstrations that are advantageous to the motorsports industry will be conducted by Hurco customers. Mast Motorsports will showcase head porting and head machining on the VMX42SWi, a 5-axis machine that utilizes a swivel head for the B-axis that has travels of +/- 90 degrees and a rotary table for the A-axis. The VMX42SWi has X/Y/Z travels of 42” x 24” x 24”, a 12,000 RPM dual-wound Yaskawa spindle motor, fast 1,378 ipm rapid traverse rates (X and Y axes), larger linear rails that are wedge locked and mounted to a machined shoulder to increase rigidity, and a 40-station swing-arm automatic tool changer (ATC). The lead engineer from Mast Motorsports will be on-hand to answer questions about the demonstration.
Hurco and their IndyCar partner Carpenter Fisher Harman Racing (CFHR) will machine a damper part the race team manufactures at their Hurco CNC Machine Shop in Indianapolis on the TMM8i slant-bed lathe with live tooling. The lead machinist from CFHR will be on hand to answer questions about the demonstration. The TMM8i has a 2-inch bar capacity and an 8-inch chuck with a maximum turning diameter of 25 inches and maximum turning length of 79.4 inches. The fast servo turret provides fast and accurate tool indexes with the ability to use any combination of ID and OD tool holders. The C-axis programs to .001 degree and it is standard on the Hurco lathes with live tooling unlike many competitive models.
The unique advantage of Hurco CNC machines is the flexibility of the control because it empowers the machinist to determine the most efficient way to program the part whether it be CAD/CAM and Industry Standard NC, or Conversational Programming. This type of flexibility is especially valuable for the racing industry because the machinist can program the part right at the control with conversational programming and rely on the sophisticated verification graphics to prove out the part before machining.
Robbie Ott, lead machinist for CFHR said, “I especially like using the Hurco when building prototypes. Just recently we built prototype damper parts. And like with most prototypes, we did not succeed the first time. Hurco gave us the flexibility to make modifications quickly and easily without starting from scratch.”
Another IndyCar machinist Shane Sievers said the flexibility of the control makes the need for quick turnaround easy, “In a lot of ways, we’re like a prototype shop.
I’ll get a call when the team is on the race track and they’ll say they need a part tomorrow morning. Sometimes I have a print. Sometimes I sketch it out on a piece of paper. The Hurco control makes it easy to get the part from my head to the control…the Hurcos are made to handle that kind of quick turnaround and the need for flexibility.”
About Hurco:
Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, Hurco manufactures sophisticated, yet shop floor friendly machine tools designed for virtually any application and budget. The flagship VMX Series is a production-oriented line of mills designed for speed while the high performance TMX Series is its counterpart in the lathe category. The popular VM Series of mills and the TM Series of lathes combine small footprints with huge work cubes and best-in-class features. The U Series and SR Series feature application machines with 5-axis technology. The TMM Series includes lathes equipped with live tooling for multi-tasking.
Each machining center and turning center from Hurco includes the integrated Hurco control with WinMax® which has multiple programming methods and is the most efficient way for machine shops to increase productivity.
For more information, please visit:
www.hurco.com
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