More than 90 visitors from the UK, Ireland and Sweden, representing 45 manufacturing companies attended an Open House at High Wycombe-based
www.hurco.com/gb Hurco Europe, at the beginning of December (3 and 4 December). Managing director David Waghorn said that after tough trading conditions in 2024, the company experienced a strong upturn in business towards the end of the year. The event was therefore an excellent springboard into 2025, particularly as the order backlog is in excess of £8 million, more than double the figure at the same time last year.
Hurco offers four types of five-axis machining centres — cantilever, trunnion-type, B-axis spindle, and large, bridge-type machines with a two-axis spindle head. The latter two models are proving especially popular, with three five-axis DCX bridge machines sold this year alone, all into the aerospace and defence sectors. The attraction of the SRTi B-axis range with flush rotary table is down to the user’s ability, if desired, not to use it but to place a much larger component on the long fixed table for four-axis machining.
One-hit machining is the rationale for all these five-axis machines, allowing parts to be produced faster and more accurately, while often avoiding the need for expensive fixtures. There is also a demand from three-axis machine users for single-axis and compound rotary tables to add four-axis or five-axis functionality to achieve similar results. Hurco is likewise seeing an increased appetite in the market for more sophisticated models in its turning centre range which has resulted in accelerating sales of the TMX series lathes with Y-axis, sub spindle, C-axes and live tooling. Again, fewer operations to the finished item, preferably one-hit production, is the goal.
Owing to a general shortage in the UK of operator skills on the shopfloor, automation continues to be of interest, although sales in 2024 were flat compared to previous years. Hurco offers its own make of plug-and-play ProCobot for handling individual components and also often delivers machining centres with an Erowa pallet storage and retrieval system. Alternatively, frequently it is the user that retrofits one of the many makes of third-party robotic machine tending solutions that are available.
Another feature that is helping to maintain the popularity of Hurco machines is the latest software in the proprietary Max 5 19in colour touchscreen CNC control which has always been popular because of the ease with which a first-off part can be programmed. There is now a ‘Solid Model Import’ option, allowing conversational 3+2-axis programs to be created directly from an STP file. Similarly, 3D DXF files may be imported and worked on seamlessly.
Sales of machining centres under a long-standing agency agreement with the German manufacturer Roeders has also helped to bolster turnover in 2024. Traditionally used in the mould and die sector due to their ability to produce an almost mirror surface and minimise or even eliminate hand finishing, the three-axis and in particular the five-axis machines are increasingly finding applications in other areas such as the dental sector. They are additionally being used more and more for jig grinding of, for example, punching tools, as the function is now optionally integrated into selected machines.
Mr Waghorn concluded: “Although there is still uncertainty in the market, the feedback I get from our sales engineers is that they are optimistic about 2025. Our High Wycombe premises, which we moved into five years ago, gives us a great base from which to continue to grow. We have a fantastic machine demonstration area and would encourage anyone considering a machine purchase to pay us a visit.”