Bridgeport Series I CNC Mill

[cprucha]

Hi All,

I have wanted to get into CNC, and have been looking around at a few vertical mills. Would really like to add this capability to my shop and also the challenge. This past weekend I went and looked at a Bridgeport Series I CNC Mill. It seemed to be in pretty good shape and was very clean. It hasn’t been used in 3 years so there was no way to fire it up. It has a sub table mounted over the original machine table, which has (3) 5/8 slots. The hookup for DNC is on the tape reader. The mill also comes with all the original Bridgeport manuals, teletype machine, paper punch, 15 Erickson #30 tool holders, and collet set. I think I can get the mill for a reasonable price and was wondering what your opinions would be for this being my first CNC machine. I put some photos up of the mill on the following web page.

<A HREF=http://www.oldengine.org/members/cpruch ... Bridgeport Series I CNC Mill</A>

I currently at work use SDRC Ideas and Mechanical Desktop 6 to do design and engineering. My goal would be to drive the CNC machine using the graphics generated from these systems. In reading some of the conversation on this board, I see some other software would be required to get there and was wondering if anyone else is using MD6 geometry to generate the G-code and what software you might be using to get there. Sorry for all the questions and I appreciate your help. Thanks, Craig…

[jpfalt]

I bought something similar about a year ago. A Bridgeport Series II with a Boss 2 controller that was working when I picked it up. I'm still working down the honeydo list and hope to start working on it this winter. I'll be retrofitting a ManchineMaster controller to replace the Boss 2 controller. I paid $600 for the mill and moved it on my brother in law's trailer from Grants Pass to Beaverton, OR. The darn thing weighs 5000# and is a real chore to shift around.

I'm planning to power it off a 7 HP rotary converter as I don't have 3 phase available at present.

I guess if you go for it we can comiserate through the process of getting the things going. It looks like you have a more recent controller than the mega filing cabinet hooked onto my mill. You have a major bonus in that it came with plenty of documentation. I'm going to have to find a source for the schematics for the control and power supply.

[PatBearss]

I have a one just like your that we picked up for the high school I work at.
Because of the age of the controller and the limited ability to dribble programs into memory we decided to update the controller. We purchased a driver board that replaced most of the controller logic in the big box below and behind the tape reader.
If the power supplies and steppers are functional this would probably be one way to go. The board was from MachineMasters at AH-Ha, it cost about $1995.00.
If you have to buy motors and power supply then there may be no point in retaining any of the old and you would have the chance of going with 1000 to 1500 oz servo motors ($500 + new) (3)Gecko 320 drives at $140+ and Doug Fortune @ www.cncKITS.com sells a 1 or 1.5Kw power supply($365 or $447).
After that it is just wiring.
Pat Bearss

[jpfalt]

I already have the MachineMaster card and a PC to connect it to. How did your retrofit go?

I was wondering how much of the big ugly box could go away as part of the retrofit. I knew the tape drive was going bye-bye and I know I need to keep the DC power supplies in the bottom. How much of the upper panel did you keep?

[cprucha]

Is it difficult to get a PC to talk to the controller of the mill? I believe that the Bridgeport CNC mill I am looking at, has a Boss 5 controller. Do they use standard G code? Wish I could have bought all the manuals home that come with the mill and read them. Sorry for all the questions. Thanks, Craig...

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[PatBearss]

When we purchased this machine for $2500 I called Bridgebort and asked if I could feed information to the mill thru the rs 232 port. They said no that the memory of the controller was too small. They said people were having good luck with the Machine Master retro fit. Maybe there are some people out there who could cut the code from the software into pieces and drip feed it to the controller?We decided to go with the Machine Master card. The machine you are looking at was put out of service 3 years ago. In my experience this usually means something broke or wore out and it wasn't fixed. The machine is 20 years +_ years old and looks as if it was well used. We paid $2500 for our machine and another $1995 for the Machine Master card at that point because we are a school we had to have our electrician spend 80 + hours hooking it up and tying it into our 3 phase power. If your machine has any problems in the electrical panel you might have to go the other route that I mentioned in the earlier post...new steppers, or servos, Gecko controllers, and power supply for maybe $2000+_.
Here is a picture of our mill.
Pat Bearss

[jpfalt]

The machine I am working over came with the mill, Boss 2 control, a separate Textron remote terminal (a table with a box hanging under it and an original IBM AT that the machine was programmed from. Witht hat lashup, the mill was run from the AT. I was told tht the remote terminal took the input from the AT and sent it to the Boss 2 in pieces so that the controller thought it was coming off the tape drive.

It all worked when I picked up the machine, but takes up way too much acreage for my limited shop area, hence the MachineMaster retrofit.

I see from your picture that there is still a big secondary cabinet. What's in it?

[PatBearss]

The box on the right side had the original controller boards. Mostly these have been removed. The millmaster card goes in this box and I also left room for the PC. The back cabinet has all the original power supplys and transformers and switches, we didn't touch that other than running power to it.
Pat