Machsupport Forum
General CNC Chat => Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) => Topic started by: Toolmaker1988 on July 25, 2012, 10:32:00 PM
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My machine finally came as of yesterday. It's a 1989 Bridgeport Interact 412 and I'm planning on retrofitting it to mach 3. Nothing went as planned with the delivery. First off it was over a week late of first estimated delievery date. So i was intially going to rent a forklift for the move but someone else rented it out and it wasn't going to be back in time. So I had a friend with a backhoe and the front loader on it was said to be able to lift 6,182 lbs. With the machine weighing in at roughly 5000 lbs I figured it would be ample to lift it off the semi. The front loader had a fork attachment but the backhoe wasn't able to lift it off the semi as the hydraulic fluid was slightly low. So my friend also had a wench truck and ended up winching it from the semi it to his flat bed wench truck. We then brought it back to my house as I had the semi go to his because the semi wouldn't be able to make the bend at the top of my road. His truck also has a tilt bed so he sat the end of it right in the garage and we spent the next couple hours wedge it down the bed of his truck with the help of gravity since it was inclined until it rested half way in the garage and half way still on his truck. He pulled his bed out some(still leaving the 4x4 resting on his bed) lifted up and pushed it back and repeated until it was about 6 feet into the garage. From there I rented a pallet jack and my dad and I slowly and painstakingly moved it into position. The pallet jack said it could lift 5500 lbs and it did but it was extremely difficult to move around because of the weight. It's setting in position now resting on 4x4's and roughly leveled. I tore most of the stock electronics out as I won't be using these for the retrofit and have them currently listed on eBay. I'll upload some pictures tomorrow.
Joey
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Looking forward to seeing your progress!
JH
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Here are the pics.
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and a couple more..
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The control panel and some of the electronics have been removed at this point.
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Looks like a solid machine to convert. You got a lot of work ahead of you....
JH
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Thanks and I know it's going to be alot work but I enjoy tinkering with machinery. I found the same Speedstar VFD that you went with on ebay for $950.00. Is this in the neighborhood of what you picked yours up for. Also I had a question on the servo's did you use the stock brake or go with the optional brake they offer with the teco servos from machmotion. That's pertaining to the Z axis of course. I was doing some more research on line about the factory specs of this machine. I couldn't find anything "official" from Bridgeport, but I did find other people selling the same year machine. They all say the spindle is 10hp and go up to 10,000 rpm. Does this sound right as I know you said yours would only go 6,000 rpm. It also says the stock rapid speed was 472 ipm. I remember reading your post and you were saying yours came stock with somewhere in around 300ipm. Did they advance the machine that much in 2 years or is the resellers information incorrect. I was also thinking maybe there was different optional equipment available at the time of the original purchase. Any thoughts on that. Thanks
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Looks like a sturdy machine :) If only my workshop had the headroom for a bedmill/VMC :(
Hood
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I haven't measured the OAH precisely but it fit under my garage door which has 94" under the door(with about 3-4inches of clearance). That's even with 4x4's under the machine. I wanted to make an update on here. I got some of the panels removed and a lot of the unnecessary wires out the machine. Most of the bolts came out but some were extremely tight and a couple I had to drill out as they stripped out. All the bolts so far were metric Allen heads, philips, and regular screws. Below are some pics of the progress.
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Seems like it is quite a low machine then, I have only 7ft door but inside I have 94 inch ceiling so maybe I need to look out for something like this.
Hood
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Thanks and I know it's going to be alot work but I enjoy tinkering with machinery. I found the same Speedstar VFD that you went with on ebay for $950.00. Is this in the neighborhood of what you picked yours up for. Also I had a question on the servo's did you use the stock brake or go with the optional brake they offer with the teco servos from machmotion. That's pertaining to the Z axis of course. I was doing some more research on line about the factory specs of this machine. I couldn't find anything "official" from Bridgeport, but I did find other people selling the same year machine. They all say the spindle is 10hp and go up to 10,000 rpm. Does this sound right as I know you said yours would only go 6,000 rpm. It also says the stock rapid speed was 472 ipm. I remember reading your post and you were saying yours came stock with somewhere in around 300ipm. Did they advance the machine that much in 2 years or is the resellers information incorrect. I was also thinking maybe there was different optional equipment available at the time of the original purchase. Any thoughts on that. Thanks
I got my VFD at for 800, but that was a long time ago...
driveswarehouse.com/p-2124-pc1-75.aspx
Yes, use the stock brake on the Z. Its a simple 24VDC solenoid (i think)
Check the motor plate on the spindle, it will indicate the MAX RPM for your machine.
Look n good !
JH
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I put in more time today and got nearly all the panels, guards, and covers off of the machine. I also go all 3 of the servo's off the machine and pulled the stock mouting brackets off them and their sprockets. I also shop vacced 90 percent of the chips out of all the nooks and crannies. I found a set of servo's buy before the weeks end. I checked into the rpm of the spindle it is in fact 10,000 rpm. It says 1500/10000 rpm at 5.5kva on the nameplate of the motor. So I'm assuming that means the spindle only turns 1500 max rpm and through the belt ratio it can achieve 10K? I will show some pictures of the progress tomorrow.
Joey
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So I'm assuming that means the spindle only turns 1500 max rpm and through the belt ratio it can achieve 10K?
This means the AC Spindle motor and ALL bearing in the spindle noise are rated for 10K !!! Nice.... Your VFD will adjust the frequency to the 3 Phase Spindle Motor to control the RPMs. The number of poles will determine the frequency to RPM ratio.
The Spindle Motor on my 412 has 4 poles (ie 100Hz = 3000RPM, 200Hz=6000RPM ), simple calculation will get you 10K
Again, 10K ROCKS
JH
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Here's some more pics of the machine further dismantled. :) There's also some pics of the ways as well. I'm having trouble locating the Main input for the air. There's a large line hanging down under the far back left-hand corner of the machine(as viewed from front). I'm thinking this may be the main air in. I tracked it it seems to go either up to the power draw bar or to the the nose of the spindle. Both are large lines and I can't determine which is which as they are in conduit atm. I was thinking the main air was going to go to that block of air switches and then spider out from there but I seen no large hookup for it. I will post pics as soon as possible to clarify what I'm talking about.
Joey
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I got the electric ran to the main Disconnect inside the machine electric panel. I also spent awhile at the hardware store dreaming up an air line setup and bought all the connections for one. Today I got that all put together and have 2 quick connects an inline filter and main shut-off. It's also piped all the way back to the machine but I capped it off there as I don't know what connections I will need yet for the machine. Everything worked great and no leaks on the first go. 2 out of 3 of my servo motors and drives came in today. The last one will come in on friday. I found them on ebay for $1,300 shipped(for all 3). 2 separate auctions though hence the delay in arrival times. Some of the manual labor is going to wean off soon and I'll be knee deep in wiring this machine. I can't wait for that phase of this retrofit. I'll get some more pics up soon after I have a little more progress under my belt.
Joey
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Did quite a bit since I last posted. Changed the motor plates so they match the new Teco Servos. I wired up a couple more things in the electrical cabinet. Then made 3 line driver boards and also intergrated the brake circuit into them. I called about which pin it was for the brake output they told me it was pin 45 but that doesn't seem right. So waiting on more info before I modify 1 of the control wires I bought off them. More pics soon as I haven't post many lately.
Joey
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So I had begun working on my machine again about a month ago. Everything is wired and works fairly well I still got to do some servo tuning. I haven't yet hooked up the toolchanger but it's the next thing on the list. I got the haas keypad hooked to the pokeys and I have mapped about 70 of the buttons to their respective button presses in Mach 3. Here are some pictures. I completely changed my control cabinet compenents as well to some more expensive and reliable electronics. I have a couple pictures I'll put and maybe I'll take some more if anyone's interested.
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hey toolmaker,
I almost bought a Bridgeport Torqcut 22 that needed a retrofit and cleaning up but didn't have room for it and wasn't sure if I was up to the work needed. ::) Your machine looks to be about the same vintage as the TQ 22. Looks like you did a SUPER job on yours , ( that operator's panel is SHARP dude !). I was kinda interested in what it took you to get to where it is now but there seems to be about a 2 year gap between your last 2 posts. ;D
None the less buddy it's a great looking machine you have there, hope it works as good as it looks.
Rick
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Ya I would say I got about 4 months of time invested and about 10k so far. I was no master electrician when I started this there was quite a learning curve to take on a task like this. I didn't work on the machine for awhile due to some personal reasons in my life but recently took it back up and plan to see it to completion and start getting some of that cash invested back out of it :). Or that is the plan anyhow! If I could give advice to someone trying to recreate this I would first and foremost inspect the ball screws of whatever machine your getting(if this is possible under your situation) I love the Teco servo drives. I'd recommend them to anyone. Make sure you don't ever tap on the back of the servo motor. Like when your putting pulleys on :). I completely changed the breakout board(to CNC4PC's C32 CNC Board) and most of the control components in the back to get some noise immunity and reliable stuff that was more easily replaced. By this I mean using the previous boards I had to build a line driver board so the breakout board could speak to the servo with noise immunity from using the 2 wires versus the singled ended wire coming from the breakout board. I also learned that actually grounding the shielded cables is super important and having a good ground near the machine is nearly essential IMO. I would also suggest for a possible retrofit project that you buy some new wires for all your devices to be hooked up. As in kind of plan what gauge wires your going to need and order some reels of shielded cable in the correct sizes that you'll need. I dug through and reused a lot of the older wires but it would have looked more professional and uniform had I done that. The servo drives and VFD have a descent book to go with and to a first timer this can seem overwhelming but you just got to take the time to read through see what options you have and get them set correctly for your situation(parameters and such). I ran a Haas at my work so I decided to figure out the keypad matrix on Haas keypad. Just so I could bring the Haas feel back to home. If any1 would like the matrix table I'll put it in an excel sheet. I'll try to take some new picture of the back cabinet as well and post it up tmrw. I read through JHChopper's retrofit and try to closely mimic what he had done. A big thanks goes to him as well or I wouldn't have felt at ease at trying to retrofit this. I have a video of it cutting I'll post up. This was it's second test piece so I had pretty slow feed rates especially on the plunge. As my confidence in the machine increases I'll move to a more productive level. Happy Holidays :)
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I'll put the movie and pictures on tomorrow as I'm going to have to edit it and make it a bit smaller to post on here.
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Second Test Part
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Where / how did you get a has control panel?
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I got the Haas keypad off a site on the internet that sold replacement parts for Haas machines for a bit cheaper. It was $250.00 for it back when I bought it a year ago. I did a google search and couldn't find the site I bought it off of. They sold other haas parts as well for cheaper than going thru Haas. I was curious if anyone on here has removed the X axis table on one these machines. The ballscrew has .0025 of backlash in it. It's not the thrust bearing so It either needs reballed or refurbished. I just can't figured out how to get it out. I got the 4 bolts out that bolt it to the table from underneath. But it's also doweled in and won't come down off the dowels. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I search all over for a maintenance manual and didn't find anything.