Hi,

I just bought an old Bridgeport R2E4 Boss 9 Series II CNC machine for cheap money. The servos still work but the controllers and panel are shot.

Question: What is the best retrofit kit for the money currently? It seems like Ajax has a good one, but I also see Mach Motion and many others.

My budget is about $3200.00...which I know is cheap but that's all I have right now to spend.

I basically want to retain my old servos and convert it in the easiest possible way (least amount of fiddling) but also want something that's of decent quality.

Any advice would be extremely appreciated to this newbie. I've read so many posts that my head is spinning.

Thanks

How do you know the panel and controller are bad? Have you checked all fuses and power supplies? The Boss9 (R2E4) is really a pretty decent control (if 200 IPM rapid is fast enough). I've worked on these machines in So. California, and a $300 service call could be all you need to get it working, or at least confirm your making the right decision to give up on the existing control. You could save $3K, AND be up and running!

Mr Boss8,

I agree, I have to give it a shot first. The previous owner had said he was having problems with some the buttons not working on the front panel and he made a few by-pass switches on it. Then the spindle motor stopped working. He said he checked all the fuses, but also said it could have been the inverter or power supply. I'm going to tear it down and see if I can find what the culprit is. Could be something as dumb as a loose wire.

For sending code over to the machine; what are the some of the steps? I read the manual several times but it doesn't go into detail about how to do this (It was printed in 1985).
what type of cable or adapter do I need coming from windows PC? I want to be able to execute some fairly complicated 3D models. Is there a way to allow the Boss it use large files?

Are there any advantages to doing a retro if I can get the original equipment to work?


Thx

A simple DNC program will allow virtually unlimited file size to be used. The largest file I've needed to run was about 8 MEG.

The Boss9 came in two basic flavors. Look closely at your machine. If the servos are Contraves, with BEI encoders, your best bet is to ditch them along with the electronics, as the whole works are crap. If you have Powertron servos, you are better off. Your machine had better have a fan in the door, early ones didn't and the electronics cooked. I had the former and spent a fortune on repairs for the servos, also went thru two front panels before hardwiring my own with actual pushbuttons. The buttons that get used most wear out the fastest, so on the cycle start, etc, you will actually wear right thru the membrane. You can, if you're really mechanically inclined, make a replacement front panel by separating the two membranes that are stuck to the face of the panel, and tracing out the circuits like I did. I eventually sent the whole machine out and had a Centroid retrofit done for about $17k (a while ago, to be sure), and ended up with a superior machine, with the exception that Centroid put their controlling computer inside one of the metal cabinets, which also has had heat problems. I wouldn't recommend that course of action. I think I may still have the old Boss9 manuals which do (sort of) tell how to use the EZ-Link feature. It also had a DNC mode, which, as I recall didn't work too well.