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Even people with a CNC turning background are sometimes a little confused, especially in the areas of tooling and when the use of an additional Y-axis is necessary. In this article, I will shine some light on the basics of live-tool machining and the application of the optional Y-axis.

In fact, Hurco has been awarded several patents for technological advances in this area and can perform as well or better than any of the other well-known and respected controls in the industry. One of Hurco’s more recent partnerships in the CAD/CAM arena has been with a software product called WorkNC .

Hurco’s WinMax® control has something called UltiMotion, a patented software-based motion control system that offers a variable block look-ahead that allows the control to see up to 10,000 blocks into the future and can produce reductions in cycle time of up to 30%, especially on the more complicated toolpaths where more look-ahead is needed ...

For example: on a trunnion machine, where the A-axis can tilt 110 degrees in the negative direction but only 30 degrees in the positive direction (like any of the Hurco 5-axis trunnion machines), we need to do what we can to “force” the control to always tilt negative when possible, ensuring that we have enough axis travel to complete the move.

Today’s Hurco users are well aware of the term SFQ, or Select Surface Finish Quality, on the Hurco control, and probably have a pretty good idea about which settings...

Hurco is well known for its powerful and easy-to-use conversational software, and for 2D and simple 3D geometries, the WinMax conversational control simply can’t be beat. But what about those jobs that share both simple 2D features and complicated 3D shapes that can only be programmed using CAD/CAM software? Hurco has an answer for that as well.

Machining intricate parts without running out of tooling stations is a common struggle when creating parts on a mill-turn CNC machine. Let’s say that you are running a machine that has a 12-station turret, and once you begin to load all of the tools that are necessary to complete the features on the part, you realize that you don’t have ...

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I mentioned in the opening paragraph that NC subprograms can also be used with a Hurco WinMax conversational program using a feature called NC Merge. The procedure is pretty much the same as NC, except we will be calling the subprogram from a conversational block instead of inserting the M98 G-code call.