Bridgeports hidden buttons on cncs

[leggetmachine]

I have a question about some machines we have in our shop. we have abridgeport SX,DX, and a romi lathe all with pretty much same controls. on the control panels in the upper left cornner just above the F-keys there is a black plate that says ez-path sx or dx there are 3 hidden buttons underneth it.i was wondering what these buttons are for. Any help would be great.

[machintek]

Keys are assigned in the software to different functions. The hidden keys may have a function in DOS but not in the Bridgeport software.

George

[leggetmachine]

thanks for responding to my question. would you have any idea what they do exactly

[fredhh47]

I have a Boss 15 308SX Discovery CNC with 8 tool changer. There are several screens that come up with buttons that do nothing, or worse, put the machine into strange, useless modes. I wouldn't worry about those buttons, you probably don't need them, anyway. Just my 2cents.
Fred Howe

[eztrak dx]

I have personally worked in Bridgeport Machines (main plant in Connecticut)for 5 years on the EzTrak SX DX assembly line (also the VMC760, VMC800, and VMC1000 line, partial Torqcut 22 line) but I never did get to see them hidden buttons. But I know some information on setting drives, leaderror (setting leaderror is not guessing), backlash, passwords (2 of them), gib setting (called the rocks), etc. The information on the VMC's I have is setting switches, Siemans parameters (including Re-Initializing the Siemans module and passwords, Simodrive 611, 4K,6K,10K machines, etc.)

[One of Many]

Hello All,

New to the board here. Sounds like there is a lot of good experienced folks to get to know here. I do all of our machine tool troubleshooting on several BP VMC's that you listed. I have one of the passwords as in someones birth date as I recall. LOL! Not like they are all that top secret any more. I'd sure like to add more to my books if you are willing to forward them via private message if need be.

Normally I have quite a few contacts to get questions answered. Nice to see this resource here too. Between you and George, I'm probably still wet behind the ears, but I look forward to resolving whatever these machines throw at me and haven't been too stumped yet.

The rest of out CNC's are Milltronics. I can't complain too much about these machines. They have been very reliable for the last 10 years.

My EZtrak at home is an early model from 1990. The original Proto-Trak version. Not even a SX, but she was an R&D hanger queen with low hours and the price was right. I brought it home when it was 9 years old and have really enjoyed owning it. There is that looming threat to replace the control some day......

Thanks for being here guys. I look forward to reading your future posts.

Incidently, I thought those hidden buttons on the EZ-Path were function keys for the EZ-Trak SX and DX machines?

DC