MACH reviews
Haas: most successful show ever
HAAS Automation booked a record 37 machine sales at MACH 2008,
bringing the company’s tally for the month of April alone to 70 machine
sales, also a record month.
The company featured over 19 machines on one of the largest single
stands the organisers had ever booked for a MACH show. All the machines
Great show for GF AgieCharmilles
EDM and milling machine specialist GF AgieCharmilles sold twelve new machine tools with a combined order value in excess of £1.4m during MACH. These
orders were in addition to over 80 additional serious and positive enquiries taken during the show. Said Steve Sylvester, managing director: ‘Whichever way
you look at it we had a really good MACH. ‘It’s always great to take new machine tool orders on the stand - and the fact that over 50% of these came from new
customers is particularly pleasing. I’m also delighted by the volume and the quality of the enquiries we took during the week, which are now being actively
followed-up. Another positive aspect was the spread of machines sold.
‘On the EDM side both wire and die-sink machines proved to be popular with visitors. On the milling side our strength in high-speed and 5-axis machine
tools was evident with four Mikron advanced milling machines being sold during the week. Make no mistake - MACH is an expensive event in terms of time
and resource, but all indications suggest that it’s given us (and is continuing to give) an excellent return on our investment.’ www.gfac.com/uk
Flying start for Leader
MACH 2008 got off to a flying start for Leader
CNC of Nuneaton with a machine sale on the first
day of the event. Jaycee Engineering of Brownhills,
Walsall had been reviewing the market for a 2-axis
turning centre for some time and conducted one
last examination of potential products at MACH
before making its decision to acquire a DMC CNC
lathe on day one of the show. Later in the show,
Double G Engineering placed an order for a larger 12S DMC machine. www.leadercnc.co.uk
Water-jet sales rise Hardinge shows
how it’s done
GLOBAL Rebar Services (GRS), has reported an increase in
sales of water jet cutting machines following MACH. The
Knuth entry level Water Jet Cutter, the Hydro Jet Eco 0615
was on demonstration at the show. Managing Director Paul
Smith said: ‘Many of the visitors we had at MACH were
surprised at how affordable a Water Jet Cutter is. It was great
to be able to demonstrate the high precision cutting and
flexibility of the machinery. Our Water Jet Cutter sales are up
135% on last year. This is directly attributed to our attendance
at MACH.’ www.globalrebar.co.uk
Service is key for Kerf
AFTER enjoying a successful MACH 2008, Dan Taylor,
managing director of Littleborough-based Kerf
Developments reveals that when speaking with visitors, the
issue of quality after sales service kept cropping up. Kerf is a
leading supplier of cutting and profiling equipment. ‘In
general conversation, we were constantly reminded that
where both after sales service and preventative maintenance
are concerned, many companies fail to deliver. That
inevitably means that what is always a high-level investment
for customers in various sectors can be put at risk through a
sheer lack of post-sale professional care.’ Issues ranged from
slow response times to a lack of preventative maintenance
schedules. www.kerfdevelopments.com
28 MWP july 2008
could be seen performing representative metal cutting demonstrations,
machining 4 tonnes of material throughout the 5-day event. Said managing
director Nick Remington: ‘Visitors to the show were able to see for
themselves that Haas machines are of the highest quality, deliver exceptional
value and have the lowest risk of ownership available.’ www.haas.co.uk
WITH over £700k worth of
machine tool orders taken and
£150k of workholding products
sold from its stand during the
show, the company is now
following up the 250-plus
customer enquiries that were also
generated at MACH week. To
date a further 12 machines (worth
£650k) have been sold as a direct
result of the exhibition. Said
David Andrew,UK Sales &
Marketing Director: ‘MACH was a
tremendous event for Hardinge.
The interest shown by exhibition
visitors to the new technology
being showcased was particularly
pleasing, with our new 5-axis
machines (XR 300 5AX and XR
600 5AX), and our range of
standard, performance and highperformance
lathes and turning
centres being, quite literally, the
centres of attraction.’
www.hardinge.co.uk
Hurco’s dancer learns CNC
programming in a day
FOR many years, Hurco Europe has marketed its
twin-screen Ultimax CNC system as the easiest
control to use for shop floor programming of
vertical machining centres. On the company’s
stand at MACH 2008, the message was reinforced
by Jenny Bowen, a professional dancer, actress and
singer, who demonstrated the control to visitors
throughout the show. After just six hours’
training at Hurco's showroom and technical
centre in High Wycombe, Jenny was able to create
a cutter path to produce a demonstration
component using the control’s conversational
programming and touch-screen navigation.
Weeks later at the NEC, after a short refresher on
the first morning of MACH, she was able to
demonstrate the user-friendliness of the Ultimax
4 running the latest WinMax Windows-based
software.
Jenny commented: ‘Before going to Hurco, I
had absolutely no knowledge of machine tools
and my computer skills do not go further than
writing e-mails. Yet I found it a breeze to learn
how to program using the Ultimax control.
www.hurco.co.uk
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