There is a couple old 80's vintage cnc mills that are coming up in a auction soon and I am considering as a project to retrofit to mach3 controll and gecko drives. There is tons of info on old Bridgeport cnc upgrades but nothing I could find on these.

Excello 604 cnc mill 1982 w/ dynapath 10 control, 3hp bad controller

Excello 605 cnc mill 1985 w/ dynapath 20m control, 3hp working conditon

Tree 325 cnc mill 1987, 2/ dynapath delta 30m control, 5hp, working condition


The tree is probably larger than what I want for my hobby use in the garage. I can find no info at all on the excello units.

What I am wondering is.... are they servo or stepper motors? Motor info that would assist in considering a retrofit to gecko's and mach3. Any other info such as spindle taper (ad says morse 30 which I assume is wrong and means cat30).

Any info at all on these beasts would be most appreciated. As mentioned, the end use is for hobby use in the garage.

Thanks!

Sparky, I can only comment on the 605 since I own one. The motors are servos. Voltage is 130 volts and the amperage is too high for the Gecko's. Read done a few threads as Pimpbike and I discussed motor drives for these machines.

My spindle is nmtb 40 taper with power drawbar. I'm not sure if there were any spindle options offered with that machine so you would have to confirm this with the one your looking at.

Mark

I have a couple of Ram type 604's they are about the same size knee mills as a BP but considered more rigid.
The usually come with SEM DC motors.
I converted the varispeed to VFD, they still have the 2 speed gearbox.
I retro-fitted both, one with Galil and the other with Acroloop.
Al

I have a 1978 Model Excello with the GE 1050 3axis control and would like to upgrade the machine to a new control. I would like suggestions on whose control to use for this upgrade. I have seen a Chinese control for $1500 that looks as good as anything I had ever run in industry, but 32 bit controls were new then. I was very interested in the PC driven units as well. They seem to be more inexpensive and just as or even more capable, since I could use one computer to do the CAD and CAM work as well as run the machine. I would like to retain my servos and drives, but since the tape reader doesn't work and the previous owner wasted several dollars trying to get the comm port to work, I feel that the best option to ever really be able to use the machine well, is a new control. I had given up such a thought many years ago as such a conversion cost 15-30K ten years ago, but now I see amatures converting leadscrew machines for a $1000, and I already have the ballscrews, servos and drives. I for years had manually input every line by hand and paid for the machine many times over, but it was more trouble than it was worth for most things. Hand written code is quite prohibitive to type into the machine on the shop floor. I would really like to get a CAM software to do this work and am willing and able to throw a few dollars at such good machine. It was running when I stored it 3 years ago, but guessing by the number of dead mice I see around, that is unlikely to be the case when I move it to my new shop this summer. Most of my work will be hobby type work, but I have made a good secondary income from this shop as well. I have had to move twice as shops I rented were sold and my equipment is stored without power. I am building my own building now and have just about finished paying off the 3 Phase line extension ($6K and it was only three poles).

There is a couple old 80's vintage cnc mills that are coming up in a auction soon and I am considering as a project to retrofit to mach3 controll and gecko drives. There is tons of info on old Bridgeport cnc upgrades but nothing I could find on these.

Excello 604 cnc mill 1982 w/ dynapath 10 control, 3hp bad controller

Excello 605 cnc mill 1985 w/ dynapath 20m control, 3hp working conditon

Tree 325 cnc mill 1987, 2/ dynapath delta 30m control, 5hp, working condition


The tree is probably larger than what I want for my hobby use in the garage. I can find no info at all on the excello units.

What I am wondering is.... are they servo or stepper motors? Motor info that would assist in considering a retrofit to gecko's and mach3. Any other info such as spindle taper (ad says morse 30 which I assume is wrong and means cat30).

Any info at all on these beasts would be most appreciated. As mentioned, the end use is for hobby use in the garage.

Thanks!

A follow up..... I didn't go to the auction. It was a 5 hr round trip drive and I assumed they would go for more than I wanted to spend considering the distance of the move and all.. WRONG WRONG WRONG

About 50 people at the auction.... Excello with intermittent control $15
Working Excello 602 $35
Working Tree 325 $50
Only one bid on each... all the same guy. !!!

Needless to say, I am somewhat sick now! Auction was in Utica, NY and I live in Rochester

Ouch! I've done that before, :withstupi. But 15$ !?! And 35$ for the one that worked! I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

Ouch! I've done that before, :withstupi. But 15$ !?! And 35$ for the one that worked! I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

AND 3 cabinets full of tooling for the 3 mills. $300
I was just starting to sleep again through the night and you reminded me.