Hurco VM1 boosts Portchester capacity

Hurco has detailed how Portchester Engineering has added an entry-level Hurco VM1 vertical machining centre to its plant list to provide additional capacity for machining smaller prismatic parts.

Portchester Engineering tends to produce small batch sizes 100-off is a large order, with five-offs down to one-offs more usual, so it is essential to set up jobs quickly to maintain profitability, as fixturing and programming often represent a large proportion of total production time.

Hurco's single-screen Max CNC system with slimline touch-screen colour LCD uses drop-down menus, conversational programming and scalable graphics to speed programme generation on the shop floor.

Samantha Morrison, owner of the firm, said: 'Compared with the older machining centre that the VM1 replaced, which had a control that required G-code programming, the Hurco MAX control is much faster to program on the shop floor, so less time is wasted getting the job into production.

'Nearly all of our programmes are prepared this way.

'Only if the component is particularly complex or needs an engraved identification number do we generate the cutting cycles off-line using Vero Visicam.

Morrison also liked the speed of the machine.

The 10,000rev/min spindle option, 19 m/min rapids and BT40 tool change time were all faster than on the previous machine.

In addition, the small footprint of 1.8 x 1.6m was useful to minimise the amount of space taken up on the shop floor.

General tolerance is +/- 0.01mm, which the VM1 easily holds.

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