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Project "YOU Bit It Off, YOU chew it", aka installing a Bridgeport CNC
AdeV:
Project "YOU Bit It Off, YOU chew it!" begins!
As a few of you already know, I recently won a Bridgeport Interact MDI on eBay, for £small_change. For reasons which I will explain at the end of this post, I didn't get that machine, but a slightly different one.... and it arrived today on the back of a lorry:
Hoik!
Plant!
Tada.wav! One Bridgeport Interact 1 Mk2 with Heidenhain TNC150 controller! Wahay!
Now the long and unnecessarily difficult task of recommissioning it starts.... I already began to clean it in the previous picture, WD40 everywhere (it's been out in the rain :Doh:).
It seems to be pretty much all there. There's a couple of clamps which hold the Z-axis motor - visible at the top of the previous picture - in place which are missing, I can fabricate those on the manual mill, as well as the 5/16" UNC bolts to hold it down if necessary. Because it's been sat in the rain, I had some warm air blowing into the cabinets:
Eeek!
EEEEEK!
Hopefully all that wonderful '80s electrickery stuff still works... Lots of big fat transformers and other 3-phasery.
I do have the covers, but I won't fit them until the machine is up and running. I hope to power it on at the weekend, that should be long enough for the WD40 to do its magic, and gives me time to make the clamps.
So... the Tale of Woe...
The machine I actually won was a Bridgeport Interact Series 2 MDI with Heidenhain TNC145 controller - a slightly smaller machine with a slightly older controller. After the auction (which specified "Machine must be removed in 3 days"), I contacted my favourite machine mover, determined he was pretty much available on spec, then utterly failed to contact the seller.... who FINALLY got in touch on the Friday (Auction ended on Tuesday) to tell me he'd promised the machine to someone else prior to the auction end, and when said person came to collect it turned out the X-axis motor & encoder were missing.
FFS & all that.
However, the same seller had this machine going. We did some haggling, and now it's both mine & here, and it's complete - there's only 1 cut wire (I think it's the light wire, as there's no work light on the machine), and apart from the missing brackets to hold the Z-axis motor down, it seems to be all there. So, fingers crossed, it'll all work, and not too much rain has got into the spindle or motor bearings to knacker them.
So... if you're looking at a machine from eBay seller "machinetools_rus" - be careful...
I may yet have nothing more than a lump of inert cast iron... but hopefully, so long as the motors & encoders are good, even if the old electronics have died I have a good friend who is a bit of an electronics genius, if only I can tear him away from his racing car...
dsquire:
Ade
Nice Find. Looks like it should make lots of chips if it all turns out OK. If it were mine I would keep a fan and a heater turned on the electrics for several days to be sure that its dry. You don't want to take any chances and let any of that smoke out. Enjoy, I'll be watching from the other side of the pond. :lol: :lol:
Cheers :beer:
Don
Rob.Wilson:
Very very nice Ade :drool:
I hope it all grafts OK for you when you power it up :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :thumbup:
Rob
andyf:
Looks great, Ade.
The circuitry reminds me of the electro-mechanical intestines of old juke-boxes and pinball machines, but rather beefier.
Look forward to hearing how it runs; as Don says, don't rush the drying out.
Andy
DMIOM:
Ade,
Would also suggest you pop the back off the cantilevered display/keyboard unit and get some warm air in there as well. You won't get right inside the TNC itself, but the monitor's HT won't like the damp.
One warning (on the basis on the TNC 155 that I use, on a non-Bridgeport CNC mill) - there is a battery back-up which is sustained by a couple of AA batteries behind a half-crown sized plastic screw plug and an inner cover just below the spindle & feed rate over-ride pots. DON'T remove the batteries until you have a good solid mains supply - if the batteries are removed, or run out, with no other supply, then the machine parameters can be lost. Being a BP you may be able to get them from someone else and key them in, but it'll be a pain.
Dave
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