Does anyone have any input on a CNC Brigport?

[JJM]

I am looking at a BRIDGEPORT INTERACT 412. Are these good machines? How much shold I put in to one? It is a 1990 model. Please any help would be great! Merry Christmas

[machintek]

Probably a TNC155 control, BOSCH drives, SEM motors (if my memory is correct).
Control is very reliable but a slow thinker and has conversational.
SEM motors do need care as they have brushes.
BOSCH drives are good but very hard to get repaired. Bosch will not, even in Germany.
Probably a KTK spindle drive. They say there is no repair or parts for this spindle drive. Older machines had a CONTRAVES spindle drive.
How good are the way surfaces?

Overall, unless you are very good at repairing these, since so much is old and out of date, I would advise to find something newer or with Fanuc guts as to have a better chance of keeping it going.

George

[FiXeL]

We have an interact 1020 (i think) at work with TNC5100 controlls from Heidenhain. I would NEVER get a bridgeport, even a newer model. My expierence is that they need alot of maintenance, leak oil and coolant and are a mess in general. Also very hard to keep clean.

Good thing this old piece of junk is going to be replaced with a Deckel Maho

[machintek]

Fixel,
I am sorry to hear about your machine. There were very few 1020s made. I installed 3 in my territory, one with a Fanuc control and two with a Heidenhain 2500.
Both have been running very well with only a couple of visits each and they are now at least 10 years old. Sometimes a machine experience is a matter of chance, other times it is a function of the quality of the service engineers that install it and maintain it. There is also a certain amount of preventative maintenance required to keep service to a minimum. The Heidenhain is a extremely reliable control. The Bridgeport iron is exceptional.
I have been installing and repairing these machines since 1982. Both in the Northeast for a Bridgeport sales/service center and in the deep south for a dealer.

George

[FiXeL]

Maybe my judgment isn't interely objective, I have been working with CNC milling machines for about 5 years now, and most time was spent behind Bridgeport vmc's. But we do also have a Micron CNC milling machine, and a Fehlmann HSC milling centre, and you can clearly see the difference in quality when working with those machines. Bridgport's dump their way oil in your cutting fluid, while the Micron catches it in a separate resevoir, and the Fehlmann uses a minimum amount of grease for lubrication. With the newer types of bridgeport's it isnt so hard to get the way oil out of the coolant tank, but with the older ones, its hell. And if you don't remove it, the coolant goes bad. Also the bridgeports have lots and lots of corners and seams where swarf can build up, so they are harder to clean.

I'm sure that bridgeport makes good machines, but they need more maintenance than our boss allowes us to do. The interact 1020 we have is about 15 years old now, and to be honest, worn out. You have to determine the datum every time you put the machine over its reference marks, because sometimes the datum shifts 0.3mm in the Y-axis. We already have tried replacing the encoder, but to no avail.