Hi All,
I am in the business with a partner building diesel performance engines for tractor pulling the past 3 years, 12 years prior I worked in automotive production machining, I mainly worked in the shops prototype department using manual equipment but did get my feet wet with cad/mastercam, and some g-code but don't consider myself fluent in it but can somewhat speak the language. With that being said we currently do all our one off pieces manually but do see we could benefit with cnc equipment. I have been studying Hurco, Prototrak, Centroid, Mach 3, and a couple other. The advice I'm looking for is do I try to find machines that need retrofitted with one of the most user friendly controls or find a nice used machine already set up. The Hurco machine looks very nice if we wanted to pick up some small production runs from some other local shops but I'm guessing we wouldn't do more than 100 pieces per set up. The Prototrak machines to be the best idea for one off pieces and not have to retrofit a machine. Centroid and Mach 3 look like nice software but would most likely have to retrofit a machine with the software. Size I am would be looking for a bedmil/enclosed machine with 40" minimum x travel (thinking we may machine billet valve covers etc.) with a lathe 14" to 20" swing by 24" to 36" length. We do work with another guy using Solidworks for designing item for us so I would like to be able to convert his drawings. To get our feet wet in the near future im leaning towards the Prototrak machines and if it progresses over a couple years into some production items we can look at Hurco machines with tool changer etc. I have also looked at the Kipware website, can something like that be used on an old dos system and what are small shops using for cost/cycle time estimators. Opinions are appreciated, thanks