Bridgeport Series 2 Interact 4 CNC retrofit

[verisian]

Hi everyone,

I've just completed most of the work to retrofit our Interact 4 with modern CNC control. I thought I'd post a few pics and some drafts of the schematics of the new wiring. We tried to keep a lot of the old wiring, and as such things like the power drawbar, hard limits and E-stop circuits are still operational without (much) modification. There is still a long list of things to do before its fully operational but we were able to machine wax and aluminium samples so far.

The basic control system consists of:

- CNCdrive DG4S servo drives for X, Y and Z axes
- PlanetCNC mk2 cnc control board for CNC control
- Parker 514C dc controller for spindle control


Basic diagram of the axis control setup. Note the 480v connection on the transformer is just for the connection label, it isn't actually feeding 480v.




The error/fault/E-stop diagram. Control relay 2 (CR2) is operated by the original E-stop circuit. When activated, all drivers stop. Also, if one driver faults, they all deactivate.




The interface between the PlanetCNC drive board and a CNCdrive DG4S:



The Parker 514C dc servomotor driver config (Note that the AC to DC circuit on terminals A1 and A2 will be replaced by an AC contactor):



A few pics of the setup so far (wiring needs to be tidied and a lot of other jobs done):



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[dbsharp]

nice! are those drives powering the original servos? Just make sure to keep noisy wires away from the unshielded usbcnc cables. Those 5v signals will suffer from EMI if your not carefull, ask me how I know, haha.

[verisian]

Yeah using the original servos but with AMT102V encoders. Good idea with the usbcnc cable, I have noticed the usb connection to the computer drops out momentarily when powering up the capacitors. Did you end up shielding the 5v signal cables? or just physical separation was enough?

[dbsharp]

I kept the ribbon cables separate and used shielded cable on all the inputs. that was good enough.

[KennyPowers]

Your machine and setup looks amazing. I imagine that all those wires will be routed and connected nicer in the final version

I would also add, make sure that you use shielded cables for motor wires, limit switch wires etc.. Shield of a cable should be connected to GND only at controllers end.
For limit switches I would recommend to use inductive sensors, connected at 24V PSU. To connect them with controller use opto-isolated adapters.

For both, output board and controller(otherwise communication is not stable and voltage levels fluctuate) its good to use separate power supply 12V.

[verisian]

Your machine and setup looks amazing. I imagine that all those wires will be routed and connected nicer in the final version


I would also add, make sure that you use shielded cables for motor wires, limit switch wires etc.. Shield of a cable should be connected to GND only at controllers end.
For limit switches I would recommend to use inductive sensors, connected at 24V PSU. To connect them with controller use opto-isolated adapters.


For both, output board and controller(otherwise communication is not stable and voltage levels fluctuate) its good to use separate power supply 12V.

Thanks, it has taken a very long time to get to this stage! Yep the wiring will be tidied a lot and I will have to figure out shielding etc. The machine originally has two limit switches on the end of each axis (so 4 limit switches for each axis), the first on each end will go to the control board, if its just a switch I assume it doesn't need to be optoisolated. The second limit switch on the end of each axis cuts power to the machine. I currently have the output board and controller on their own 12V power supplies.

What have you done for wiring tidyness from the control board? Do you have a picture of your setup?

Regards,
Ben

[KennyPowers]

Hi,

Not my machine, but my friend just finished with a retrofit of special purpose machine (for PVC window profile cutting) and this is his electro-cabinet.
I look forward to your future updates of your machine.

[verisian]

So i've been on holiday for quite a while and I don't actually have access to this machine anymore, but I received a question about it so I thought I'd post another update.

I have the milling machine running with the new controls and I've done some cutting - it still needs a few bugs ironed out. Here's a video of the first test cut

https://goo.gl/photos/44uteNzb9j1w879m9

and here is a photo of the first cut using CNC control (as you can see it still needs some tweaking)



In terms of the speed of maximum the spindle, it depends on the spindle motor that you have as I understand that these machines came equipped with different versions. This one only goes up to 1000rpm based on its field windings and I don't think theres much you can do to change that. I'm not sure about changing the maximum feed speeds, I haven't tested the max I can achieve yet but I've had it traverse pretty bloody fast!