Hurco celebrates with new technologies

Open house ceremony

Looking back on its five decades of growth and innovative service, Hurco has turned its own attention to the factory of the future and to continued innovation and expansion as it moves into 2019 and builds off of 2018’s successes.

Resilience, Innovation, and Commitment to customer service remained at the forefront of Hurco (S.E. Asia)’s goals shares General Manager Wai Yip Lee to Kathryn Gerardino-Elagio of International Metalworking News for Asia (IMNA).

IMNA: What is the vision Hurco seeks to accomplish now that you are celebrating your 50^th year?

Wai Yip: We’ve done a good job in the past 50 years to come up with a control and software that addresses customers’ needs. We shall further develop our machines and control technology to incorporate automation components in line with the Industry 4.0 transformation.

Industry 4.0 is the current buzzword. At the recent IMTS 2018 held in Chicago, Hurco dedicated an entire quadrant of its booth space at IMTS to automation to demonstrate the technological benefits of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things f) with the Hurco CNC machines communicating with collaborative robots, multi-axis serial robots, and pallet systems.  Most job shops are facing labour shortages, especially skilled labour, so transformation towards automation and smart manufacturing would be a key consideration to stay relevant.

IMNA: How does Hurco practice partnership with its distributors?

Wai Yip: We work hand-in-hand with our distributors for our regional marketing activities and support them actively through test-cuts and product simulation to cater to their customer needs. We use our showroom in Singapore and Taiwan as the key platform for product launches, customer centric events and tailored test-cuts. During these events, our overseas distributors will invite their customers who are interested in our featured demos to join us. This allows us to reach out to a larger and regional group of end-users for our open house.  Through meetings with our overseas guests, it helps us understand their specific machining needs and the demands of the regional markets, so that we can provide the necessary solutions for these markets.

IMNA: What are the innovations you will be putting forward today?

Wai Yip: We are showcasing for the very first time in SEA, our 3D print head adapter made for Hurco machines. As a technology company, we wish to highlight our concept of adding a 3D printing function through the use of a print head adapter.  Instead of investing in a purpose built 3D printer, end-users can now simply “plug and play” this print head adapter to their existing Hurco machines. We have received an overwhelming response from the 2^nd generation print head shown at IMTS.

We are also running live cutting demos on our 5-Axis Machining centres: VC500i and VMX42SRTi XP. The VC500i, a cantilever style 5-axis machining centre with a 500mm diameter table and 12K rpm direct drive spindle is a new machine launched in 2018.  It offers a large work-envelope with a small footprint and a large low-mounted table to ease clamping and access for 5-axis parts.  We have put on the TRIAG Sputnik II which features multiple parts clamping with single part reference, disputing the myth that you cannot machine more than one part on a 5-axis machine at one set-up.  The VMX42SRTi XP, a popular 5-axis model, now features direct X & Y axis and direct torque motor B-axis to tackle demanding applications. The demo features the machining of a bespoke car rim which we have programmed and tested for our customer.  

IMNA: What are the two or three strongest values of Hurco that made the business reach this long in the industry?

Wai Yip: There are three key attributes: 1) Resilience: We have shown our resilience as company and grew over the past 50 years weathering economic cycles and technological challenges.  We grew from a small start-up in Indiana and to a listed company in Nasdaq with a US$243 million turnover in 2017. Currently, we have 11 global locations where we are able to provide sales, application and service support.

2) Innovation: We continue to innovate and bring forward advanced technology. As the inventor of conversational programming, our commitment to develop sophisticated technology that is easy to use in order to help our customers be more productive and more profitable continues to drive innovation at Hurco. We developed UltiMotion, our motion control software technology and upgraded our control technology to make 5-axis machining easy to understand and easy to apply. Also, as we tackle the move towards automation and Industry 4.0, we want to assist customers with their first step towards automation, manage job scheduling and generate key machining information through our control and software.

3) Commitment towards our customers and their needs: We continually listen to feedbacks provided by our customers, their challenges and watch closely the market developments. We are committed in channelling our resources towards developing technologies, such as UltiMotion and 3D Solid Model Import to help our customers be more productive and more profitable. As long as we continue to listen to our customers and keep their concerns close to our hearts, we will continue to stay relevant and become a stronger company.  

Snippets of Hurco open house celebration in Singapore