I just bought a Series 1 CNC machine and I am wondering how to ID which model I have (BOSS 3, 4, 5, etc). It has a non-rigid ram 2HP head with a pneumatic speed control, pneumatic brake, coolant pump, lube system, round heatsinks on motors, distance meters on screws, reel to reel tape drive, control panel (green, white, orange with keypad in lower right corner), etc. There doesn't seem to be anything which says BOSS on it. I can get some PCB part numbers if that helps.

Is there a way I can plug this thing in and see if it works? I have a 2HP VFD that I can remove from my other mill to power up the spindle. Are there other 3-phase components inside or are the rest of the electronics 120V? Does anyone know where I can get a schematic for the controls? Can this thing be controlled from a PC which drives the original drivers and motors? What kind of motors does this thing have (6 wire, 8 wire)?

Thanks for any help.

--Eric

If you have an LSI-11 board with 4 main IC's, you may have a Boss 3 or 4. A lot of Boss 3's had some wire wrap boards in them. If your LSI-11 has 5 main IC's, you may have a Boss 5 or 6. The Boss 5 has also a RCK and XDI. The Boss 6 has a a ZCK, NTP and ZDI. The series 2 version only came in Boss 6. The boss 6 stepped in 0.0005 inches. All prior Boss machines stepped in 0.001. The BTC1 was a Boss 7."

The drives use a three phase transformer in the back cabinet. There is a single phase transformer for 110VAC control circuit. There is also a transformer for the 54VDC power and a large power supply that produces the logic power (5VDC, 12VDC, -12VDC).
Do not advise trying to run it without a rotary CNC rated phase converter.

I have seen some maintenance manuals for BOSS machines at machinemanuals.net.

George

I actually have 2 machines that I am going to be working on. One has the LSI 11 with 4 chips and one has 5 chips. They both have IDX, RCK, and ERS boards in the card cage. There are no wire wrapped PCBs in either machine. Is there anyway to tell which BOSS they are when they are powered up? Can you hook up a PC terminal to one of the PCBs to read the version?

Does anyone have any schematics for the PCBs?

How about wiring diagrams? The machines have different wiring diagram numbers:
LSI 11 (5 chips) has diagram number D1927773
LSI 11 (4 chips) has diagram number D027773

Two ways of knowing. If you hook up a teletype or PC as a dumb terminal go to setup and press edit it will come up with BOSS ? INPUT. If there is data in memory it will come up with BOSS ? EDIT. The ? is the BOSS level determined by the PROM on the ERS board.

The other way would be with the part number on the ERS board.
IE: 1927990 is a BOSS 5 with RS232 as a printed circuit board.
1927424 is a BOSS 4 with RS232, no metric, printed circuit board.
1927106 is a BOSS 4 with out RS232.

Schematics for the PCBs are typically in the Maintenance manual. My scans are too big to attach here.
http://www.machinemanuals.net/products.php?cat=11
Above is a link to a maintenance manual on CDROM for $15.00.

George

Thanks for the input.

Machine 1 has ERS A027990 (s/n 14) BOSS 5
Machine 2 has ERS A027106 (s/n 30) BOSS 4

I wanted to know what version I have so I know which manuals to buy.

It looks like the BOSS 4-5 maintance manual is the best one to get. $25

--Eric

What are the specs of the secondary side of the T2 transformer? I am trying to see if I can use 3 seperate transformers instead of the 3 phase transfomer to power each axis.

What is a "CNC rated" RPC? Is it just balanced for the third leg?

--Eric