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Hurco Turning centers-Who's got them?

proturn

Stainless
Joined
Jan 20, 2010
Location
zimmerman, mn.usa
I'm looking for feedback on Hurco turning centers. How many of you have them and how ridgid is the tm10 or Tm8? I really like my Hurco VMC's and I think having a conversational control for my short run jobs would be the way to go. What do you like/Hate about them? Thoughts?
 
Used to work on tm8.
Programming on control is a bliss.
Verification option is a must.
Very compact. Thing i didnt like is lack of spindle orient on a version w/o live tooling.
Machine has boxed ways irrc.
Rigidity-vise its pretty good.

They have a weird turret indexing. The whole turret moves forward a good 3/8" , rotates and then comesep back. So i at some point i expect problems with crud getting in between there. Also not sure how rigid it is because of that. Seems like a light to medium duty machine.
 
They have a weird turret indexing. The whole turret moves forward a good 3/8" , rotates and then comesep back. So i at some point i expect problems with crud getting in between there. Also not sure how rigid it is because of that. Seems like a light to medium duty machine.

This is how curvic couplings work. You may be used to turrets where the coupling itself retracts, hidden from view, but the principle and the physics are the same.
 
The thing I didn't like about them is, if you indexed from one tool to the next, and it had a number of stations to go past, it would stop momentarily at each station before finally resting at the station you called up.

This was a long time ago, maybe they've since changed that?
 
I ran a TM8 when I worked for someone else. I ran it from the day it was dropped off till the day the company closed 4 years later. Overall it was ok not my first choice for a lathe. The turret was slow but the new ones are faster.
Parkerbender on this site has one of the new y axis lathes, From what I remember he wasn't super happy with it. Being that I have ran both I would take a Haas ST over a hurco on most days. I like their mills but not a huge fan of the lathes.

Jason,
 
Not a direct answer, I picked up a TM6 this year. I had more problems than anyone should go through buying a new machine. 98% were the distributor, as they had lost their distributorship during the sale and when there was an issue they bailed and I was left standing. Hurco, the regional sales manager, and the new distributor did a good job. However, after 4 months they couldn't get the lathe and bar feeder to talk to each other. They replaced both the lathe and bar feeder and all works good now. The lathe has all the door interlocks. These really limit setup and don't close the door and power down the machine, you'll have to power up just to open the door. I signed a waiver to have these bypassed, but it obviously didn't happen. The parts catcher catches the parts, but dumps them prior to closing into the catch bin. Some clever sheet metal in the catcher has helped, but it definitely isn't a 20% success rate with their original mechanism.

I bought the Hurco over the Haas since it was 700 pounds heavier, and the local Haas distributor didn't impress me. Even though Haas had the lathe on the floor and wired in, they wouldn't turn it on. Had to turn on the tool room lathe. Also, the guy didn't even know what size tooling the turret held. Then I went to Hurco, the sales guy knew what he was doing. The company just fell out with Hurco and I was caught in the middle.

With the second round of machines, I haven't had any operational issues. I'm running a 5C nose and small parts, so it may be different then your application.

Good luck.

Dave
 
Re-opening discussion

Hey PM,
I want to re-open discussion on this thread. This last Friday I pulled the trigger on the last 2012 Hurco TM8 in the US. It was a demo unit in California. Hurco really shot me a fair deal and loaded the machine up with every single software option, parts catcher, tail stock, tool presetter , chip conveyor. I'm super excited about this addition to the shop.

What kind of tolerances are you holding? The tm8 weighs in at 9k lbs. how's the rigidity? What's the biggest drawback?
After selling my Mazak I realized how important conversational programming was on the turning centers so that's why I went with Hurco. The Mazak had a 8 station turret and the Hurco has 10. The Mazak memory was tiny and was full after 15-20 programs. The Hurco will be hard pressed to ever fill up. The Mazak communicated via RS232 cables and was never reliable because I had to use a USB to db9 to 25pin adapter. It was a giant, time consuming pain in my ass most of the time. The Hurco has a USB at the control so that alone will be a welcomed change.

Is there any easy mods you've made to the machine to improve anything? I look forward to your reply's!
Proturn
 
I've got an old (old body style and the old computer inside the control) TMX8MYS, I think it is a '2012' but like January of that year. It fought and fought us for quite a while on things such as turning between centers, and a couple other things. I am bad at keeping after them on fixing issues because of the nature of our business, we make 50-100 parts, and then onto the next thing, so by the time we 'got something fixed' I wasn't making the part that was giving us the troubles anymore.

Finally I threw a big enough fit that we did some major overhauling on the thing a month or so ago. New machine. The latest software update basically fixed the graphics problems we were getting, I found out there is a spindle sync calibration screen that was never used... things like that. Lately (barring the hiccups that we still have, possibly because I have never used a lathe before getting this y-axis 37 horse lathe with a sub) most all of the problems are gone. If there are lathes that index a turret faster... that would be scary. In general after talking to a neighboring shop that runs Mazaks, I think that the problems we have are normal turning-centers-can-be-a-pain problems. It makes money.

Would I get one again versus buying a 2-year old Mazak? Excellent question. Do I like it? I think I probably do.

No experience with the TM line, but the TMX's are at least tough, fast, and well... tough and fast.

We are holding +/- .0005 on production parts, and if I need to keep 15-20 parts to +/-.0002 I can do that too. I would get into the habit of writing something down to reference what tools you are using for programs, or saving the tool offset files, as the machine saves what it has been using, and not specifically what you used on that program that you all but forgot 6 months ago... Not the world's biggest deal because you can re-write most programs for new tools in like 15 minutes, but, still could save some frusteration.

Also, we almost always turn off 'gouge protection' If you understand how the whole lead angle with lathe tools thing works, it is probably just fine, but it is easier to lie to the control with it off... when you don't know crap about lathe tooling (and we sure don't yet around here...)

Also, we put a bigger worklight in it, as the bulbs they use from the factory are hard to replace, but it is just 110vac coming into the little housing on ours...

Hope you have fun with your lathe!
-Parker
 
Thanks everyone so far for the feedback. After some conversations with Hurco I've decided against the 2012 hold over and am getting the 2013 TM8i ! I can't wait to get this thing on my floor! Someone turned the work switch on again and we're busy again! Thank God!
 
GREAT!

So now I can re-utter my cheese comment w/o puting my hoof in my mouth? :drool5:

(I guess it's not such a cheese issue, just old I guess... ???)


----------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
GREAT!

So now I can re-utter my cheese comment w/o puting my hoof in my mouth? :drool5:

(I guess it's not such a cheese issue, just old I guess... ???)


----------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Cheese away Ox, cheese away....
You can pretty much bet I'll be posting some videos and pictures of the machine in action. I've been slightly disappointed with the lack of honest to goodness real world turning action with any of the Hurco lathe line. It seems most of them magically remove metal before the video is taken.

I damn near bought a Doosan lynx 220lc but then I realized it only had 67lbs of torque. The TM8i has 133 and still retains 4800 max rpm.
 
We have a the 8i machine.
Only things I recommend is getting the little brass tube extensions for the coolant nozzles and the mist reclaiming system. At 4800rpm it makes quite a haze.

It has a lot of power is very accurate and is very easy to program, I don't think you even need a cam program. We never use it for this machine only for the live tool machines.
 
I've got an old (old body style and the old computer inside the control) TMX8MYS, I think it is a '2012' but like January of that year. It fought and fought us for quite a while on things such as turning between centers, and a couple other things. I am bad at keeping after them on fixing issues because of the nature of our business, we make 50-100 parts, and then onto the next thing, so by the time we 'got something fixed' I wasn't making the part that was giving us the troubles anymore.

Finally I threw a big enough fit that we did some major overhauling on the thing a month or so ago. New machine. The latest software update basically fixed the graphics problems we were getting, I found out there is a spindle sync calibration screen that was never used... things like that. Lately (barring the hiccups that we still have, possibly because I have never used a lathe before getting this y-axis 37 horse lathe with a sub) most all of the problems are gone. If there are lathes that index a turret faster... that would be scary. In general after talking to a neighboring shop that runs Mazaks, I think that the problems we have are normal turning-centers-can-be-a-pain problems. It makes money.

Would I get one again versus buying a 2-year old Mazak? Excellent question. Do I like it? I think I probably do.

No experience with the TM line, but the TMX's are at least tough, fast, and well... tough and fast.

We are holding +/- .0005 on production parts, and if I need to keep 15-20 parts to +/-.0002 I can do that too. I would get into the habit of writing something down to reference what tools you are using for programs, or saving the tool offset files, as the machine saves what it has been using, and not specifically what you used on that program that you all but forgot 6 months ago... Not the world's biggest deal because you can re-write most programs for new tools in like 15 minutes, but, still could save some frusteration.

Also, we almost always turn off 'gouge protection' If you understand how the whole lead angle with lathe tools thing works, it is probably just fine, but it is easier to lie to the control with it off... when you don't know crap about lathe tooling (and we sure don't yet around here...)

Also, we put a bigger worklight in it, as the bulbs they use from the factory are hard to replace, but it is just 110vac coming into the little housing on ours...

Hope you have fun with your lathe!
-Parker

We save a program once the tools are setup as "tool -------" then the next part to program just start with the tool program. also they have a tool library option.
 

Although those look to be deals, aren't those machines built by Tatung machine works? I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure Okuma subs the build of those out to a another company to build so basically the Live tool machine is a $80k off brand like the DMC I was looking at. Even at $100k, they are out of my budget. Thanks for sharing though!

I JUST FOUND THIS: http://www.tatung-okuma.com.tw/en/index.html
 
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Although those look to be deals, aren't those machines built by Tatung machine works? I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure Okuma subs the build of those out to a another company to build so basically the Live tool machine is a $80k off brand like the DMC I was looking at. Even at $100k, they are out of my budget. Thanks for sharing though!

I JUST FOUND THIS: ????-GENOS CNC Lathe for Sale, CNC Lathe Operator, CNC Lathe Machine Manufacturers and Suppliers in Taiwan ::: TATUNG-OKUMA Cnc Lathe
Lol where do you think your hurco is built? We live in a global market now....

Quaser is building verticals for Matsuura even....
 
Although those look to be deals, aren't those machines built by Tatung machine works? I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure Okuma subs the build of those out to a another company to build so basically the Live tool machine is a $80k off brand like the DMC I was looking at. Even at $100k, they are out of my budget. Thanks for sharing though!

I JUST FOUND THIS: ????-GENOS CNC Lathe for Sale, CNC Lathe Operator, CNC Lathe Machine Manufacturers and Suppliers in Taiwan ::: TATUNG-OKUMA Cnc Lathe

Tatung has been building lathes for Okuma forever. I think they built the Heritage and Cadet line before the Genos came out, possibly the Crown machines as well. You still get the Okuma control and parts and support are the best in the business. I'd trust a Taiwan Okuma over a Taiwan Hurco any day.
 
Tatung has been building lathes for Okuma forever. I think they built the Heritage and Cadet line before the Genos came out, possibly the Crown machines as well. You still get the Okuma control and parts and support are the best in the business. I'd trust a Taiwan Okuma over a Taiwan Hurco any day.

I'm well aware that Hurco is made in Tiawan. The Turning centers are finish assembled in Indiana. Again, I know what I bought and really don't care for the Okuma control. Personally, I like the Hurco control just like you like the Okuma control.

If you like Chevy, why would you buy a ford? It's pretty much the same scenario.
 








 
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