Bridgeport Series 1 CNC upgrade / retrofit

[chrispy]

Hello all,

Short term lurker and first time poster here. Tomorrow I will be picking up a sweet Bridgeport Series 1 CNC machine in really nice condition. It does have the Boss 3 controller though, which brings me to my main question.

I will be trying to run it with a PC as it sits. It does have an upgrade to run it through RS-232. In the meantime I am looking to upgrade the controller for obvious reasons. Ideally I would like to do this on the cheap. I have seen others scarp the entire controller and power supplies, and replace them. I would think that at least saving the power supplies that are already there would be a nice savings, and as well they are pretty well built.

At this point I should mention that I am pretty computer and electrical savvy, just no CNC experience. What I do envision (correct me if I am wrong). is replacing the controllers, using the current newer PC that I have lying around (read no ISA slots), and using an LCD touch screen display that I have for the so called DRO interface.

So far I have played with Mach3, and Millmaster Pro. Mach3 seems more feature enhanced, and a better pricing point. One thing that I cannot find in Mach3 is a way to manually operate the mill. Remember that this mill cannot be manually operated and must us the current DRO box type thing to control it. Am I missing something in Mach3 or might there be another alternative?

Secondly, what path should I be looking at for the controllers. I am a little bit confused after looking at all the offerings from different vendors. I do plan on keeping the stepper motors and have no plans on upgrading them to servos. I do think but need to confirm, that I need 10amps for each of the steppers. Also worth mentioning I would need to control 4 axes as I have the rotary table coming with it.

I do see some $3k+ retrofit controllers out there. Not really interested in spending that much. I am looking for something small and cheap, as I plan on chucking the CPU box on this unit and try to put everything in the power supply box. Some of the cheaper vendors do interest me, Gecko,
Microkinetics. Microkinetics seems to have a bunch of offerings, and I might just call them directly and see what they recommend, but I figure I would see what others are doing.

I am sure that I will need answer more questions, so shoot. Should be worth mentioning that this is a home CNC machine only for hobby.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

[damae]

How's the progress so far Chris? I can't believe nobody has added a reply to your thread yet, but I am certainly interested! Do you have pictures of how you stuffed the power box with the controls?

One reason I'm keenly interested is that I just bought an almost identical machine -- Series I with Boss3 control. Mine is also in running condition, but I'm still working out which aproach to take with the retrofit. My current idea is to strip off the control cabinet (as you did), replace the steppers with servos, and run the spindle off of a VFD.

Did you relocate the power box to the side where the control cabinet had been? This is something I am considering, because I would like to back my mill up against a wall to save space. If I stuff my controls in the power cabinet, I wouldn't be able to get to them once the machine is against a wall.

So please let us know how it's going, or how it went if you're already finished with the retrofit.

[rotatingmass]

At work we have a Bridgeport Series 1 CNC and it appears to have been upgraded from tape to PC controls. The owners manual shows it to be a 1979 model.
Years ago it was bought at auction and was set up to mill acrylic aircraft cabin windows. Because the working area is only 12" X 18" only one of the windows we make can be machined on it and that window is not that popular anymore. I am doing a little research to see if the work area can be increased. If so I would like to upgrade the motors and controls so I can use it in production again. I am not a machinist by trade which is probably obvious from my word choices, but from what I have read this machine is a good candidate for upgrades.

[Stevie]

Mach3 is easy to control with the arrow keys and page up and down for Z
I use < > for A axis on my 4 axis mini mill

[azarhan]

Hello, this is my first post.

I also have an old Bridgeport CNC. I have a good amount of manual mill experience, and am good with computers and electronics, but I have no CNC experience at all.

We're working on upgrading this machine, and are spending a little bit on the project, getting new amplifiers that are powered directly from AC power.
A snag we've run into, that you might too, is the spindle speed sensor. It's some sort of potentiometer, and that doesn't interface with the digital galil controller very well.
Anyone else run into this problem? How did they fix it? What software were they interfacing to?