[Gncc50]

George,

I have been having a little disagreemnet with some folks about the EZtraks that have the third axis installed from the factory. I am refering to the later models that have the conversational control with the .pgm file format.

They are telling me this was only offered as a two axis machine with a 3rd axis kit that was later offered as an add on option and that a three axis with a convrsational control was etremely rare. I believe this to be untrue, so I thought I would let you clarify this and settle this dispute.

How many years did you work for Bridgeport?

Thanks, Pete

[machintek]

Pete, I started to work for BPT in 1982. Left in 1987 to run a shop. Back into field service in 1990 for a dealer and still working on them.
BPT had a older EZTRAK that had a control made by Southwestern Industries. It had 7 segment LED display (no CRT and no floppy). No third axis available.
In 1992 BPT came out with the PC based EZTRAK. It had a CRT and floppy but no hard drive. It also had a smaller electrical cabinet that did not have accomodations for a third axis drive board.
The EZTRAK evolved and eventually had a 486 processor, and a hard drive. It also could accomodate a third axis in the electrical cabinet. There is a dealer letter, at which control serial number the larger cabinet was used.
There were 2 major designs of the 3rd axis. Both were available installed at the factory or retro-fitted in the field.
The first type had the ball screw on the left side of the head. It was a terrible design (my opinion) and I asked the dealership I worked for not to sell them.
The second design was the ELROD design that had the ball screw directly in front of the quill. A lot better design. Eventually, BPT had to upgrade this design with a motor that included a rotary encoder. The linear scale would mis-read under heavy cutting loads and the Z axis would adjust its position. Usually not a good thing.
I installed many of these machines with the 3rd axis installed and also installed many of these kits in the field. My office, in an effort to increase profit, even sold some kits to install on the older machines but not the Southwestern design (again, against my advice). I had to add a cabinet for the hard drive and for the axis drive. This bit my office in the butt when the newer motor with the encoder had to be retrofitted. The original BMDC did not have the required additional encoder input. The office had to buy a newer BMDC for these machines.
Note that ALL BPT EZTRAKS with the PC based controls use conversational programming creating PGM files and can understand and run TXT files (if the format is correct). I do not recall ever seeing a Southwestern program ouside of the control so I do not recall the format it used nor the file extension.
I hope this clears things up for you.

George

[Gncc50]

Thanks,

This should resolve the disagreement.......but it probably won't.

Thanks again, Pete