[victorgallas]

We recently acquired an EZ PATH Bridgeport lathe. When we received the machine it had some issues to be addressed. One of which was that the PC was not able to see the BMDC board. After several attempts, I was able to cure the problem with the BMDC due to corrosion on the black square chips in their sockets. Turns out that they had some corrosion on their contacts and it prevented the chips from communicating with the rest of the board. Simply remove each one, carefully by the arrows on the pic, clean it with contact cleaner and use dielectric grease if desired, then put it all back together. Now when we start the machine, it reads the BMDC without any problems after the EZ Path software loads.

The problem I have now is that I get an Overactive X Axis.
When you try to run the home position, the x axis will move very fast until it hits its maximum travel, then it will stop and give you an error on the screen. It will not home the Z axis either, since its supposed to do X first, but since the X doesn't get homed, it doesn't try to home Z.
I then when into the service mode and loaded the pfm.exe and went into the tuner screen. There I was able to confirm that both limit switches are working correctly. I was able able to manually move the Z axis all the way to its limit on Jog mode and then it would stop it correctly when it hit the switch.

But for the X axis, it will try to move past it switch and stop mechanically, due to the screw maxing out.
When you try to move the x axis on Jog mode using the handle, it will simple move the axis fast one way of the other. Essentially moving the X Axis handle each direction only seems to adjust the feed of the x axis to one direction, or the other. To stop the movement of the x axis you need to find the starting point of the handle at which the motor stops at. You can also hear the x axis drive humming during this.

When going trough the screens on the software to home the machine, I will get an immediate alarm, saying limit exceeded when its trying to move the X axis. Note that this occurs even when its in the middle of the its travel range, so doesn't means that is has touched any switches at this point. Then it says that stops are not set, use the stop button to set the stops. However I attempted this with no luck.

When I was in the tuner screen of the PFM.exe program, I rotated the Z handle, and I did not see any numbers change on the screen, however when I moved the X Axis handle, I saw that the C-axis showed numbers changing, something I wasn't sure it was supposed to happen. I started to look into the wiring schematics and the wiring of the machine, but have not found anything yet.
Note that on the picture I also get the failed to open Leadcomp, but I dont think this would cause an axis not to work.



I dont know where to look now. IF anyone could provide some ideas, that would be appreciated.

Thank you very much.

[victorgallas]

So I was able to get the machine to home and work correctly. Turns out that I think I had a bad wire, or corroded connector from one of the encoders back to the aux BOB board. Reset it and now it works.

The only weird thing, is that when I went into the home screen, I still get an x overactive message on the screen. I don’t know if that is an error I should be concerned or not.

Also, this machine came with a USB reader in place of the floppy. I know that requires me to find whoever makes that to get its software, but just wanted to ask if anyone knows of any interface issues with those USB adapters for these machines?

[machintek]

We have started installing the USB floppy emulators. We get ours from EMI. They provide the software and a thumb drive. If yours was purchased from EMI, they may give you a copy. These are also available on Ebay for less $ but no support.

Machintek

[victorgallas]

thanks for the reply.

I actually did contact EMI and got what i needed from them for the machine,
Just need to spend time to get it all setup and running here.

But most of my problems with this machine were all traced down to board corrosion and some loose wires that came loose inside of their terminal connectors. After carefully checking everything, its been working so far.