Hello all,

Short term lurker and first time poster here. Tomorrow I will be picking up a sweet Bridgeport Series 1 CNC machine in really nice condition. It does have the Boss 3 controller though, which brings me to my main question.

I will be trying to run it with a PC as it sits. It does have an upgrade to run it through RS-232. In the meantime I am looking to upgrade the controller for obvious reasons. Ideally I would like to do this on the cheap. I have seen others scarp the entire controller and power supplies, and replace them. I would think that at least saving the power supplies that are already there would be a nice savings, and as well they are pretty well built.

At this point I should mention that I am pretty computer and electrical savvy, just no CNC experience. What I do envision (correct me if I am wrong). is replacing the controllers, using the current newer PC that I have lying around (read no ISA slots), and using an LCD touch screen display that I have for the so called DRO interface.

So far I have played with Mach3, and Millmaster Pro. Mach3 seems more feature enhanced, and a better pricing point. One thing that I cannot find in Mach3 is a way to manually operate the mill. Remember that this mill cannot be manually operated and must us the current DRO box type thing to control it. Am I missing something in Mach3 or might there be another alternative?

Secondly, what path should I be looking at for the controllers. I am a little bit confused after looking at all the offerings from different vendors. I do plan on keeping the stepper motors and have no plans on upgrading them to servos. I do think but need to confirm, that I need 10amps for each of the steppers. Also worth mentioning I would need to control 4 axes as I have the rotary table coming with it.

I do see some $3k+ retrofit controllers out there. Not really interested in spending that much. I am looking for something small and cheap, as I plan on chucking the CPU box on this unit and try to put everything in the power supply box. Some of the cheaper vendors do interest me, Gecko,
Microkinetics. Microkinetics seems to have a bunch of offerings, and I might just call them directly and see what they recommend, but I figure I would see what others are doing.

I am sure that I will need answer more questions, so shoot. Should be worth mentioning that this is a home CNC machine only for hobby.

Thanks in advance,
Chris