CNC Bridgeport with Heidenhein control

It's not clear what it does really. From what I've found, the VGA RGB signals are .7V p-p, and sending raw TTL 5V RGB signals to those lines probably would be bad. Of course there could be little resistor ladder D/A converters molded in there somewhere, but I wouldn't count on it.

If it's the same machine as the one the other guy converted that you provided a link to, it looks pretty east to remove the entire head/ram assembly from the base, if a bit high and heavy.

Obviously there will be various cables to disconnect if you need to fully remove it, but perhaps you can manage to suspend it from an engine hoist off to the side while pushing the base under the doorway and then reinstall it.

That is a question for the older smart guy at the local computer store where you buy it. They do exist and aren't expensive.

Go when they aren't too busy and leave yourself some time. My last simple question lead to a story about back when he worked at Intel. Another one talked for an hour past closing until his worried wife called.

jsw, who practiced looking attentive for long periods for this:

Guys, what do you think about these controls

In any event, you would likely need the "CNC Mill Control Analog" package to work with your existing servo motors and drives. You may also need encoders depending on exactly what your mill has for feedback and if it is compatible with the quadrature encoder inputs in the analog control package. The package in your link requires existing digital drives and your mill will have older analog drives.

I will note that Machmotion takes components such as the Mach3 software, motion controllers (I think that one is from Geckodrives), and various other components and packages them in more industrial ready kits. You can buy the same components separately and do your own integration and enclosure retrofitting and save some $.

It seems to me that you might be asking if there is a manual mode, similar to using a pendant control on a robotic machine, that allows the operator to take control of the robot's motion capabilities. With some robots, there is a "teach" mode, where the operator can save the motions of a task.

I don't know that answer, but I'm curious if any home shop machines have a pendant mode.

Nice figure, Hmm?

Kevin Gallimore

No. SVGA is analog. EGA is an odd monitor choice, since they weren't in use for long. It uses a TTL level interface. Wikipedia has the various pinouts to help identify the monitor. There are several pins that tell the video card what type of monitor is in use by pattern of grounding of the 'ID' pins. MDA, Hercules, CGA and EGA used a DE9 connector, with different pinouts. Some of the scan rates inverted the Vertical or Horizontal sync, as well.

The only thing worse was the PGA 'standard'. Luckily, that turkey died a quick & horrible death.

Looking further on their site, if I were going to spend the money, I'd get their "Mill kit - TECO" which includes both the control and complete new AC brushless servo motors and drives for nearly the same price as the one to retrofit the existing old drives. With that kit the whole conversion would probably take a long weekend.

Pete, the thought is cool, but I think that this Series II takes next sie motors, not 30 inch/lbs.

Check this out. They show currently out of stock, but my have more by now.

Paul

I'd try to find the spec for the existing ones. Those TECO ones are ~30 continuous and quite a bit more intermittent. They are size 42 and should mount right up. A call to MM should confirm if they are suitable for a Series II that isn't being pushed at high production feed rates.

Here's one that looks like it is in stock, though I cannot find a link to buy it. I will call them tomorrow.

OK, I have two flavors. One is for use with velocity servo amps that take +/- 10 V analog velocity command signals. It is a very flexible board set, meaning you can mix and match boards for the actual number of I/Os you need. It runs $780 for the basic 4-axis set, that gives 4 encoder counters, 4

See

I also have another system that is for use with my own servo amps, which use digital PWM commands to the amps. This is here

Jon

Some of the old tape-NC controls were not at all set up for manual machining. Later CNC controls with CRTs were not too bad, and your TNC-151 should be in that era. They have jog buttons and maybe even an MPG to crank like a manual machine's handwheels. Pretty much all PC retrofits will also allow you to do that. I used the jog keys on the keyboard for a while, but put MPGs on my two machines now and find them to be a great addition. But, when manually facing off a surface or something, I still use the jog keys to get a constant feed rate.

My tabletop milimill has handwheels, and EMC works as a DRO when it is in E-stop, so I could use it completely manually, but I never seem to do that. I run it with the jog pendant instead. (I bought this machine for on the road demos, and never did any real machining on it until I put a spindle encoder on it, now I use it for rigid tapping 4-40 holes on some of my parts. So, that is pretty much its only actual machining it gets.)

Somebody mentioned putting a spindle encoder on your BOSS, but the way Bridgeport built their machine heads, if it didn't come with a spindle encoder, you will find it difficult to install one. That's why I don't have a spindle encoder on my Bridgeport. I think the only clean way to do it is to put a pair of gear tooth sensors through the side of the housing to pick up quadrature off the bull gear, and add a magnet sensor for the spindle index. The way the spindle slides in the spline, and the back gear and direct drive clutch all nest together, there just isn't any place to add a sprocket to pick up the direct spindle position for an encoder. I suspect you have a 4-J head on that machine, it may have a little more room in it than my 1-J head.

Jon

Well, I was going from a picture of a "similar" machine, so yours could be different. But, yes, if the control all runs off single phase, then feed it 240 single phase, and rig appropriate relays to control a VFD. Might as well leave the VFD power on continuously, and switch the control inputs to the VFD (forward and reverse).

Jon

This is exactly what I would do wrt a VFD. Fortunately, I have a VFD handy in the shed. This is the smallest one of my problems.

I also do not need rigid tapping and will not put an encoder on the head.

What is an MPG?

I am cool with doing it with keys or even command line. I am a command line kind of person.

I gather you've already bought the thing. So, part of the decision is already done.

Sure, see if you can get the old control to fire up at all, you should be able to tell from lights on the control panel, etc. Maybe scope some of the EGA signals to determine if H and V sync is coming out of the 9-pin plug. If so, go ahead and get the EGA-VGA converter and see what the control can do, whether it suits your one-off machining needs. I don't know the TNC-151 control, it apparently came in two flavors, one with G-code and not much else, and one with Heidenhain's proprietary language and their conversational machining package. The conversational thing may be what you would find useful. Practically no need for CAD/CAM in that case.

If the control doesn't fire up after the move, then you have to see how much time you want to put into finding out what is wrong. It could be a board wiggled loose during the move, or much more serious. Connectors and tantalum capacitors are the two big problem areas in these older systems.

Jon