Hurco KMB1 Questions / Newbie

[WeTDrEaM]

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Hows it going everyone. Newbie to the site and kinda a newbie to machining.

Anyway, I'm the owner of a small Performance/Restoration/Powder Coating Shop here in Michigan ( Poorboy Performance Inc. Poorboy Performance - "Everything With Wheels and Some Things Without") and am looking to expand a little bit more. A little background on what we do... Mostly ATV, Motocross, Snowmobile, Watercraft, Auto upgrades and performance. We also do ground up builds and are just about done with our first atv, ground up build. A Honda 400ex suspension geometry with a GSXR 750 Street Bike engine in it. We are currently looking to expand into making billet (and non billet) aftermarket parts and accessories for these machines to give them our own "custom brand". My partner in all of this currently works in a machine shop operating a Bridgeport EZ Trak SX and can pretty much come up with whatever we need, however, Im sure that is going to be short lived when the owner finds out we want to go into more than just making parts for ourselves (understandable)!

I"m not a "big money hustler" type guy that can afford to go out and buy a EZ Trak to bring to my place for him to come by and just start pumping out parts. But have found a good deal on a very nice Hurco 3 axis KMB1 with 5 tool holders not to far from where I'm located. it looks to have been well taken care of as the original paint is barely marred up at all and it comes with all the original books and cassettes. The current owner has no problem powering up the machine for us when we get there and letting my buddy look it over..

So my questions are how "user friendly " is this machine for him/us to use compared to the EZ Trak he uses everday now? I understand nothing is the same but dont want to get something here in the shop we are going to both stare at doing --->?! ya know? What are some things we should look out for when going to look at it/pick up?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[Rich Carlstedt]

If it has the Ultimax II control, he will forget about the bridgeport...very fast.

I am not sure if the KMB1 had Ultimax II. The older SM is a bit harder IMHO

[Jackal66]

Wet,

If it has a bx control ( which means it machines to .0001 tenths of a thousandth) I have some communication boards that I can sell you. They may work with a regular "b" control. I'm not sure. We can check with AMTS.

My Hurco KM3p had servo problems and now it is going to get retrofitted.

I have the MPU board from AMTS that you can change the master programs on from a laptop/regular computer. This lists for around $1200 new.

The master programs are available free download on the AMTS site.

Also, I have a CMC brand tape emulator. It is supported by AMTS. It replaces the little cassette player/recorder on the control panel. This board fits inside the cabinet and it runs a cable to a computer/laptop and it sends/receives programs to the machine. It seems like it is $500 new.
It uses a free program from the same site called "hurcomm".

I will make you a package deal on both boards, or sell either one. REAL CHEAP!!!! Communication cords included.

Find out what you have, and let me know.

JAckal

[underthetire]

A micro cassette hurco? Run, don't walk, run away. Fast. Good iron, but that little 6" monitor machine is a pia to keep running. Old, old machine. We finally just scraped our last one that was barely running. If you can retrofit the control, and it's real cheap, buy it.

[WeTDrEaM]

Its looking like I'm picking up a KM3P Hurco tomorrow (fri). The deal on the other one fell through... Were going in the morning to have them power it up so my buddy can check it out...

[Rich Carlstedt]

Thats great, you will have Ultimax II...great and easy to use software

[WeTDrEaM]

Well that machine ended up not checking out good.. We had them power it up and went to do a quick calibration on it. it went through z axis but every time it came to X axis it would come up on the bottom of the screen that the was a fault on the x axis servo? We were unable to get past that point no matter what we tried..