I've been looking for a mill for CNC conversion for the last month or so.
I was actually looking for a bench mill, but then...
I came across this on ebay with 20 minutes left on the clock and impulse bid on it sight unseen:
Bridgeport Series 1 CNC Milling Machine w Control Box | eBay
I'm now the proud owner of.... a lot of metal in questionable condition. At least it was cheap. $175
It will cost me twice that to ship it.
Looks like everything I need is there..
My goal is to run this with Machinekit, a linuxcnc branch which you can run on ARM processors like this one:
That is a Beaglebone Black. It is basically a cell phone processor with 2 programmable co-processors dedicated to running real-time code independent of the OS.
For another project I have one of these controlling 8 axis, 5 pwm channels, serving up the interface over the network, and a myriad of other stuff and it never gets above 30% cpu.
That part I got covered, provided I can feed in step/dir signals to this beast somewhere.
It looks like it has already been retrofit? The servos don't match a lot of the pictures I've found.
Centronics?
Also curious about:
The collet size. Found a couple conflicting accounts online.
How does the drawbar on this thing work? Specifically, if I build a tool changer, can I tighten the drawbar in some automated way?
VFD conversion (as I don't have 3 phase power and don't want a rotary converter.)
I'll need to check out the existing motor first. If it's crap I may replace it with a servo instead of going VFD.
Scrapping the variable drive for a set of pulleys. Perhaps a toothed belt so I could sync to spindle rotation?
This looks like a lot of work, but I have more time than money currently.
What do you all think?
I still have not laid eyes on it.