The Shop > CNC
Thinking of getting a CNC mill, tell me about the bridgeport series 1 interacts
AdeV:
--- Quote from: stvy on December 12, 2016, 04:31:16 AM ---Ade,
What is the weight of the Series 1 MK II?
Thanks,
Steve
--- End quote ---
Hi Steve,
I'm not actually sure, but I've got a manual for it somewhere, I'll try to dig it out this week. The chap who brought it to me brought it on his 7.5t lorry, so all I can be sure of is it weighs less than 3.5 metric tons! I'd be surprised if it was much over 1 metric ton though. The DC motor is quite a lot heavier than the regular motor, but can (just!) be lifted by one person, not that I'd like to try fitting it without a crane... the knee & column of the Mk2 are heavier than the manual Bridgeport; the table is shorter & wider, so probably about the same weight overall, especially if your manual has power feeds.
IME, £1600 will buy you a rough but - more or less - working machine; I've had 2, the first one had a bad bearing in the fan that cools the DC motor, and the mist/flood coolant didn't work, also it had the TNC150 controller. The second one, everything works bar the mist coolant (which I don't think is fitted, there's nowhere for the air supply to go), I did have a servo motor go bad which cost several £ in fuses before I figured it out. I got very lucky with mine, the guy selling it on eBay had it finishing at about 2.30am on a Tuesday... so I stayed up to finish the auction... had he finished it at 5pm on a Sunday it'd have gone for at least £1k more.
As far as I am aware, there are 4 variants of the TNC151 controller: A, B, P and Q. I've yet to determine what - if any - differences there are between them. I'm not even sure which one I've got... As far as I know, all of the '151s will accept drip-fed programs. You need a piece of software (readily available from Heidenhain's website) which interfaces between a PC with a serial port & the machine. I run mine on an ancient & nearly dead laptop running Windows XP. The front panel of the machine will tell you (broadly) which controller you have (i.e. 150, 151 or 155), IIRC the 2500 has a different shaped control cabinet (more like a console than a flat panel). I could never get mine to work properly with G-codes. so I just use "Heidenhain Conversational". I use CamBam as my CAM software, someone else had written a TNC155 post-processor which I hacked extensively to work with the TNC151. There's still some bugs in it, but it works OK for my purposes.
awemawson:
My understanding is that the 151 will accept loading from RS232 but NOT drip feed. 151B onwards does.
Muzzerboy:
BTW, an (imperial) ton is almost identical to a (metric) tonne. It weighs 1016kg vs 1000kg for a tonne, ie within 2%, so hardly worth splitting hairs.
Of course, Mercans have their own "ton" which is only 900kg. Rather like their pathetic "pint", which is nothing of the sort and is generally weak p155 anyway.
NeoTech:
--- Quote from: awemawson on December 12, 2016, 09:32:46 AM ---My understanding is that the 151 will accept loading from RS232 but NOT drip feed. 151B onwards does.
--- End quote ---
You are somewhat correct, 151 series of heidenhan can be delivered in multiple versions. The funny part it is the same system.
The B is an option as i understood it that will enable the dripfeed (band tape recorder feed). The same way Siemens do.. The 810M GA3 has several "delivery" features, for one, enabling dripfeed, larger memory capacity and so on.
So usually if you figure out how to adjust the install parts of the PLC in the system it can be unlocked feature.. This would just require alot of google-fu and reading manuals.
In th end tho most of these old systems heidenhan, fanuc and siemens can and prob. should be replaced with LinuxCNC or something. There is alot of features in a modern CNC system you want to get your hands on. I have run my Siemens system for a year now because people kept telling me "why change something that works".. well the thing is, sure it works. But its not userfriendly in any way..
awemawson:
The 151b has slightly different buttons on the control panel from the 151 as I remember
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