I just bought a Bridgeport Series II CNC. 4HP, 18x55 table, cnc 4th axis.
Thats all...
I am picking it up on Sunday, once I squeeze it into my shop (it's 7.5' tall, and 6000-7000 Lbs, about twice the size of a manual b'port) I will take some pictures. I am going to convert it to PC based controls. It will be a long process, but well worth the $500 :laughing: :laughing:
Yes, it is very similar to that one. Mine is white, and probably a few years newer from the looks of it.
As for finding the deals, I just kind of walked into this one like a brick wall... It has been for sale for about a month on a local club 4x4 board of which I am a member. I normally don't look at their for sale adds, but I was looking for ford seats and saw it. Six or seven people had said they would buy it, but the owner had had no one come through. I went and looked at it, and commited. It is strictly CNC, no manual hand wheels at all. My guess is that most interested parties figured it was to much of a project and are looking for a manual machine. I, however, have been watching for a CNC machine for about a year... Once you have CNC, the only reason to mill manually is if you enjoy it (which I do, but I have the manual Gorton still).
Oh, and BTW, this one was sitting out in a field, probably turned some folks off. The owner said it was "shrink wrapped" I went expecting stretch wrap, and terrible machine condition, but it turns out it was shrink wrapped in the heavy blue boat shrink wrap, and when I looked underneath, it was still in virtually perfect rust free shape, so you never know...
CNC 4th axis simply means it has a cnc rotary table as well. So it can machine in x/y/z and rotational axis.
That looks like the NC mill I used in high school. You had to draw everything out on graph paper, figure out the start/stop co-ords of all your tool paths, write down the codes, go to a typewriter looking machine, type it in, double check the work, then the typwriter looking thing punched out a long strip of paper that you then ran through a reader in the big box on the side of the mill. Then do a dry run with a sharpie in the quill and paper on the table before actually running the part.
Yes, it is tape fed, but most of these can be drip fed via RS232, you can hook it up directly to a serial port and send the program line by line with a com program, like hyperterminal. The steppers and drives are not much different than what people use today to do a manual conversion. It can be switched to servos very easily, with the new controls.
It makes no difference to me though, as I will be going to new stepper drives and PC based control, likely mach 3. The machine comes with ball screws and boxed ways, and that alone is way further ahead Vs. doing a cnc conversion on a manual machine with acme screws and dovetail ways.
Brief update: Cleaned the shop today, it was about 11 months overdue. The last time it got cleaned this thoroughly was when I brought the lathe home this time last year. I cleaned out what will hopefully be enough room next to the gorton. About 8' of width, out a few feet from the wall. I will take some pics of it later. I can't believe I found this much free space.
The mill is 7'5"s tall, so it wont fit through the 7x9 overhead door like I had hoped. I had to clean behind the bronco, and rolled it back about 8 feet so we can go through the 10' door with it. Hopefully I will have enough room to get it into place. We are going to use 4 car wheel dollies to move it, once we off load it with the front end loader. I should be picking it up about 11am tomorrow. I will post pics as soon as I can.
Well, we have been at it since 11am today. Unwrapped it, turns out, according to the name plate on the head, it is a series 1 not a series 2. No big deal, that means that it will fit the shop a bit better, and not be so heavy--WRONG! Odd thing is, it has boxed ways, which from my research, was only available on the series 2. Once I find the serial number, hopefully I can confirm for sure what it is.
Anyhow, we chained it to the big loader, which has easily picked up a nearly complete bronco with no axels, and it wont even budge it... No sweat we think, we will pull the head off. It is only 4 bolts and a handful of wires. Pull the head, and load it up. Good, now we can pick up the machine. Yup, the mill comes off the ground, and......... We nearly roll the loader... So then we pull all of the control and switch panels off. Bingo! We can pick it up and move it fairly easily. Trailer it the 40 miles or so home, everything goes smoothly. Roll the mill into position on some car dollies. No problems. Go to pick up the head with the engine hoist, and damned if today wasn't the day the jack on the hoist takes a crap. So, the mill is not back together, but my buddy is bringing his jack from his picker down tomorrow, and it should be together soon.
I am going to try to get the original controls running first, just to see what works and what doesn't so I am not fighting unkown pre-existing problems when converting to PC.
Anyhow, here are the pictures. You can't see it in the pics, but you can still see the factory scraping marks on the ways, I am guessing it didn't see a lot of miles. The only ways that show signs of being outside are the knee ways, but a little WD-40 and scotch bright, and they started to shine right up.
Well, it is back together. That, is an experience! I still need to remount the limit switches, and rewire the steppers, but we are close. Maybe tomorrow I will be ready to put power back to it and see what turns on...
Kind of makes the Gorton in the background look like a tinker toy, huh?
Nice find! I'm converting an old CNC knee mill to mach3 and etc right now. Can you show some shots of the 4th axis gear? Does it just bolt onto the table? That mill of yours is a behemoth!
The 4th axis is just a stepper driven rotary table. I can shoot some pictures of it later. It turns out that it was a factory option, however, the way it was run, is that you had to rob the y axis stepper drive to run it, basically the factory controls can only drive three steppers at once. If I am not mistaken, Mach 3 will have no trouble driving all 4 axis at once.
I am still putting it back together. With any luck, I will have power to it tonight after my daughter goes to bed. All I have left is to re-wire the x axis motor (we cut the wires to get the controls off), put the stepper from the rotab on the y axis (it is missing it's y motor) and run 480v to it and see what lights up
I built a 10HP rotary phase converter several years ago, and I have a 45Kva Square D 240/480 entrance transformer that I use to step the 220 3 phase up to 480.
I got the mill re-wireing complete last night and put power to it. I got the pendant to light up, but couldn't figure out how to make it jog any of the axis. I will fiddle with it more today...
I had it powered up for about 1/2 hour yesterday when something let loose in the controls. The pendant went totally dead, and the only thing I could make run was the punch tape reader and the fan in the cabinet... So, I started stripping all of the old controls today. The pendant is gone, I brained myself on it about 3 times before it gave up the ghost, so I removed it. I got 99% of the crap out of the computer cabinet. There is going to be room in there for 5 PCs if I wanted. I started tearing down the electrical service cabinet as well. There is a lot of junk in there from the old stepper drives that had to go. I will take pictures next chance I get.
I ordered 3 stepper drivers last night, a opto isolated breakout board, and I just scored a 30hp VFD on ebay (way overkill, but damn, it was cheap...) to run the spindle. Everything is about how I expected it, although I now have another $700 into it and still don't know if the machine moves or not. Well, time will tell...
This is one of the reasons I'm really frightened about buying a used mill and especially one that is dependent upon something other than me to move the table.
I'm watching this thread, fully expecting to see a beautiful and impressive machine in a coupla weeks and finding out it only cost another $1000 to complete!
Yes on the VFD, the manufacturer says it can run up to a 30HP motor. Constant torque up to 20 HP. It is a 480 3 phase drive only, works out good for me, 'cause no ebay'ers want them, and I have 480 with the phase converter/transformer.
I ended up choosing Keling KL-8078's. They are rated for 80Vdc and 7.8 amps. They come highly recommended by a guy on the HSM board who really knows his stuff.
I chose the Keling C11 BOB, it is chock full of features, and is specifically designed for mach 3.
This is one of the reasons I'm really frightened about buying a used mill and especially one that is dependent upon something other than me to move the table.
I'm watching this thread, fully expecting to see a beautiful and impressive machine in a coupla weeks and finding out it only cost another $1000 to complete!
I can manually move the table by spinning the ball screws, so I know that it is not broken. The steppers could be junk, but it is unlikely. Most of the b'port boss machines were plagued by control problems, and just did not see a lot of hours. I can get new steppers, probably more powerful than the originals from Keling for $129 each, I am not real concerned about it. I also have a box of 550 oz/in slo syn steppers, that I know are working, and I can use for a while. 550 is a little light for a 300lb table, but it would work for a while.
I am unsure if the z-axis is messed up, I am going to drop the quill when I pull the spindle. The chrome on the quill is a little f-ed up. If it is really bad, I may send it out to be re-chromed. A lot of these machines have quill problems. The chrome flaked, and then it bound in the head. If you can get it out without f-ing it up, the bore in the head can be honed and the quill re-chromed.
I got the spindle motor running, and know it works. I will have to buy a new pulley for the head, and new belt. I hopefully won't have another $500 into it, but time will tell. Stay tuned.
Well, here are the progress pics so far. I go back to work tonight, so work on it will have to wait until next week. I am kind of at a stand still waiting for parts anyhow.
I tried to spin the motor today, and found it froze solid. Opened up the head and found a nice rats nest in her. Cleaned it out and ended up breaking one half of the motors pulley. No worries, I will find a replacement, and since I am going VFD anyhow, fixed speed is fine. Got all that crap out of there, and got lots of oil to the spindle, and it still turns free. I am still going to drop the spindle, and make sure the bearings are clean and lubed well.
Wow. I don't check in for a while and when I come back Jason has a CNC project. Very impressive. I'm going to follow this thread. I'd really like to find an old CNC lathe and do a PC control conversion. I'm interested to see how your components and your Mach3 work out.
Thanks! I am interested in how it will work out as well. If all goes well, I might drop another grand and CNC my 15x48 colechester round head lathe. A cnc lathe would be super pimping. I fully intend to build a cnc PCB router and a CNC plasma table from the ground up first.
Here is todays update:
The VFD showed up today, it got beat up pretty bad in shipping, but it still works. It is a monster, 30HP drive, lots of features, I should be able to run every machine in my shop from it if I want... I got it wired up and it works flawlessly. It is big enough that it barely fits in the back cabinet. Funny thing is, an appropriately sized drive for this motor would be about the size of a shoe box. This one is 2.5' tall, 10" deep and 8"s wide... Nothing like overkill!
The stepper drivers showed up on Monday, the break out board is back ordered, and won't be coming until Friday or so. Tomorrow starts the work on the head if I feel up to it. I have had bronchitis again for the last few days. This is my 4th time this winter! WhooHooooo!
Wow. I don't check in for a while and when I come back Jason has a CNC project. Very impressive. I'm going to follow this thread. I'd really like to find an old CNC lathe and do a PC control conversion. I'm interested to see how your components and your Mach3 work out.
I've thought about CNCing an old lathe too. Not my Bradford though. My cousin has an old turret lathe he got for $1.50 at an auction. It's just sitting in his unheated garage. I moved it in there with my skid steer, so I know I could move it back out...
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