I decided to post the retrofit I am doing of a V2E3 bridgeport with a Boss 8 control. It is a servo machine with powertron servo's.
I have a series 1 manual machine I retrofitted a couple years ago with steppers/gecko's and mach3 control. Although I have been pleased with the results of that retrofit, the machine has horrible Y axis ways, badly scored. The V2E3 was owned by a friend who bought it new in 1985 for his shop and has not used it for years since he upgraded equipment. I got the V2E3 in trade for electrical work connecting his new haas machines.
The original game plan was to remove the steppers, drives, ballscrews and head from my stepper machine and transfer the parts to the V2E3. The V2E3 ways were like brand new and that was what really appealed to me. Well, after getting the V2E3 in my garage and looking things over it became clear that putting my old steppers on it would not be a simple matter. After much thought and research the decision was made to just retrofit the V2E3 from scratch using its original servos and new electronics.
Although the V2E3 was in operating condition, I decided to replace all the electronics and use Mach3 for control. Mach has worked out well on the stepper machines retrofit.
I will make seperate posts detailing the retrofit and its various steps.
I did not take a picture of the V2E3 prior to stripping it down but found a pic on the net which shows what the machine looked like before I started.