Need Help Bridgeport R2E4 Boss 9

[weldthis]

I purchased a Bridgeport R2E4 series 1 with the Boss 9 operating system. When I bought it it was dead in the water the panel lights would light up but had nothing on the crt. I pulled the crt out and had it tested and it is fine. I moved to the ezio card and found that the previous owner accidentaly swapped the bsp card out of his series 2 in the ezio cards place. After finding this i met him last night and swapped cards I tried to run it and had the same problem no display. I shut down the power wiggled the cards and this time everything died no fans, no lights on panel or leds on the cards. nothing.......
I am running the machine on a 10hp rotary phase converter. I have all of the manuals. any help would be awesome right now its looking like its going to be a manual mill...

[weldthis]

Ok I fixed the power problem and replaced the ezio card. Now the crt works fine and the machine boots up like its supposed to. When I enable the drives and try to home the axis the quill travels down an inch or so then returns to the home position. After that the drives trip out and game over. THe only error message I have is axis limit it never goes away. If I hold down one of the limit switches I can jog the y and z axis all around just fine but the z axis will only move to the left and it moves erratically.

I removed the x axis motor to ensure the table was free and it is easily moveable by turning the belt in both directions. When i tried to run the motor it did the same thing it would run for 1 second then shut off for half a second and keep doing this. It would still not run the other direction. I switched cables on x and y axis motors and the x motor worked perfect hooked up to the y motor cables. I also hooked the x cables to the y motor and the y motor acted erratic like the x motor was acting.

I returned everything to normal. I then swapped the x and y cards with no resolve. I am stuck any help would be greatly appreciated.

[machintek]

Sounds like the X cables are bad or the FMDC (if the encoder signal goes to the FMDC).
Have you gone to the FIST and BOSS monitors? They may be more specific in displaying errors.

George

[weldthis]

Thanks for the fast reply im not seeing much in the logs. Today I had a local electronics expert helping me he thought the plugs on the fdmc was were out of order so we moved the upper 3 plugs to the next spot and then we tried to run the machine. As soon as I enabled the axis's the x took off by itself very rapidly about 2 inches then the drive kicked out. For wome reason we thought is was a good idea to try it again and yeah you guessed it we saw the magic smoke. It killed a few things on the x board. Anyway he took the board and fixed it. When we hooked it back up I noticed the sequence of the 4 wires that tie into the power supply on the botton of the x card did not match the wires on the y and z axis cards. The colors and numbers were out of sequence so we corrected the problem.

Now the machine will home but that is it. I cannot get the x axis to travel back to the left no matter what I do. All other axis move either direction smoothly in jog mode and the x wil move to the right smoothly but will not go left..

At this point im concidering going with the ajax conversion does anybody have any suggestions???
Thanks

[machintek]

When it finishes homing remove the X motor belt and see if it will jog in the opposite direction. I wonder if you have a S2 FMDC board in a S1 machine.
Some BOSS 9 machines had a label inside the door with a list of boards including part numbers. This because some had metric ball screws. The distance each axis can travel and direction is burned into EPROMS. Thus cannot be changed by normal means.
Look at the wiring schematic to see if all 3 encoders are wired the same way, just as additional verification that all is counting in the correct directions.

George

[weldthis]

I looked in the fist event log and if I try to jog the x axis to the left and let the drive kick out it shows -x overflow then e stop. The fmdc board that is in there says metric only on it. There is no list of boards inside the cabinet.
Thanks

[machintek]

A axis overflow means that the control commanded a move and did not see a encoder count to verify the move. But the machine homed, thus the encoder is counting and the motor is turning. Thus I must assume it hit the end of travel = no more encoder pulses = axis overflow alarm.
Have you checked the maintenance manual electrical schematic to see if the X encoder, armature and tach are wired identical to the Y and Z axis?

George

[weldthis]

I want to thank everyone for the help, you guys are great. I decided that I have wasted way to much money and time troubleshooting the outdated electronics and I ordered an ajax retrofit. Thanks again for all of the help.

[weldthis]

Well the retrofit is complete. I replaced most of the bridgeport electronics, all but a few contactors and motors and am happy with the outcome. The retrofit was definitely tough but the outcome is worth it. The centroid conversational programming is easy enough for most beginners, and the onboard cam is a nice touch. Im making parts in 1/4 the time that it took me on my manual machines, and in only one setup.

My only issue now is that I found .005 lash in both x and y axes and would like to adjust or replace ballscrews. Any suggestions....

[machintek]

Is the lost mechanical motion in the ball nut or in the bearings?

George

[weldthis]

That im not sure I assumed ballnuts, I guess I have some investigating to do. What is the best way to check this?