Flexible control makes shops more profitable
When software engineers at Hurco develop features for the Hurco control powered by WinMax software, they focus on features that will make customers more profitable, according to the company. Additionally, the flexibility of the Hurco control is especially valuable for shops that have a high mix of parts because it is equally powerful for industry standard NC programming as it is for conversational programming.
In order to support large programs that are becoming increasingly common with CAD/CAM and industry standard NC, Hurco recently upgraded the already robust technical hardware specifications to 128-GB Solid State Storage Drive, 4 GB of RAM, and 3,000 bps of processing power.
As for conversational programming, Gerald Roch, co-founder of Hurco, invented this method of user-friendly programming in 1974 and the Hurco engineering team is continually improving it by inventing new features and evolving the user interface. For example, Hurco has introduced many 5-sided conversational features that make it possible to program at the control on a 5-axis machining center without a CAM system. Transform Plane is one of the key features that eases the transition from a 3-axis machining center to a 5-axis machining center to manufacture 5-sided parts because it essentially changes programming on a 5-axis machining center back to 2.5D programming that is used on a 3-axis machine. The machinist simply establishes the initial part origin and programs the first side of the part. Then, he enters the axis angle(s) to the next side, programs the features on that side of the part and tells the control the axis angle(s) to the next side. After following those steps for each side of the part, Transform Plane does the rest, calculating the tilting and rotating required.
“Hurco engineers have focused on the development of 5-sided programming features like Transform Plane because the fastest way for shops to instantly increase their profit margins on existing parts is to transition from 3-axis machining to a 5-sided machining process on a 5-axis VMC. It’s been a major initiative at Hurco since 2008 to make sure that the Hurco control leads the industry in making this transition to 5-sided machining as easy as possible in an effort to help customers be more profitable,” said a company spokesperson.
Another control feature that shops of all sizes find valuable is NC/Conversational Merge because it combines NC programming with conversational programming. With NC/Conversational Merge, the machinist can call up an NC program, and apply popular conversational features, such as pattern operations, scaling, tool probing, and part probing, to G-Code programs.
