I have a Bridgeport Boss 6 Series II CNC that I really depend on, mostly for its capacity. My problem is that it seems to be developing machine alzheimer's! What I'd like to know, so I can attempt to remedy this problem, is exactly where, as in what board and which chips, is a program stored when you load it into "memory". Is it the LSI, or one of the other boards? Does anybody know with reasonable assurance? I keep scrapping parts when a single character gets changed in a line of code (For instance, a decimal point will become a "G", that can get nasty). When I fix that line, another error will crop up somewhere else, or the same error will keep re-appearing. I have tried all sorts of programming tricks, dummy code, macros, whatever. I have some spare boards that I have tried swapping in to the rack, but I haven't solved the problem yet. When I put my spare LSI board in, the machine won't boot up at all, so I don't have much confidence in it. Any help would be appreciated, I'm losing my mind. Of course, I don't have the $$$ to get a real serviceman to come in and fix it. Just hoping for the kindness of semi-strangers. Thanks.
Fred
the Boss 6 uses the lsi 11/2 witch is the processor board, the RRS has the bootstrap in rom, the boss system in eprom and the ram for the program storage. there is a place for a battery on the RRS board to keep the program in ram when the machine is turned off, but I've never seen it installed. The Boss 6 electronics are very similar to the BTC Boss 7 except stepper drives and no tool changing logic. The Boss 3 thru 5 are verry similar, quire different from the 6and 7, the 8and 9 changed again. Jon P.
I think (???) I got the thing fixed. I tried three different LSI boards, but none made the machine run right. One had the original memory problem, one would lock up the machine every time I tried to load a program and the other one wouldn't boot up properly. I finally took the 5 removable chips off my original board (the one with the memory problem) and put them into the board that wouldn't let me load a program without locking up. After about 4 hours of continuous cycling on the very program that wouldn't run prteviously without developing "altered" characters, I have yet to see an error. It returns to my zero point every time. I'm hoping this will be the end of a longstanding problem. Thanks for the suggestions and info.
One thing I discovered in reading and re-reading my manuals, the BOSS Version 6.0 has the ERS board, and apparently has the program memory on the LSI board. It appears that the RRS board appeared in version 6.02 or 6.2 and carried the program memory on it instead of the LSI board. I guess that would mean that the LSI board for the Version 6.2 would be different as well.
Freddh47, glad to hear you got your machine going, hope I didn't confuse you earlier when I was talking about the RRS and LSI 11/2, I knew I'd seen it on a series II Boss6 and I assumed they where all the same, didn't realize there was a 6.2 but that all makes sense now. Good luck Jon P.
Guys,
I have a problem with my bridgeport where it will not cut a circle. I'm new with cncs, but I don't think that the problem is me. I tried using the Gcode both G02 and G03 and nothing is working. I even took some codes out of the programming manual. Now, I know that it will do straight lines in both the x, y, and z directions, but I can't get it to comply with an arc. When it comes to the machine acting out the code, it jumps right over the command and carries with the rest of the program. If anybody has ever seen this or know of anywhere to start, please let me know.
Thanks,
Russell