Bridgeport Manual to CNC conversion...

[Davek0974]

Thanks, i had it running tonight and it draws about 3A idling.

It has a PTC built in for the temperature and that will be wired in to the VFD in due course.

Looks like i have exactly 10:1 speed ratio from 10 to 100Hz which figures, works out nicely at 300 to 3000rpm.

Stopping in 1s is pretty impressive :)

Now to configure it for cnc control...

[Colin Barron]

Thanks, i had it running tonight and it draws about 3A idling.

It has a PTC built in for the temperature and that will be wired in to the VFD in due course.

Looks like i have exactly 10:1 speed ratio from 10 to 100Hz which figures, works out nicely at 300 to 3000rpm.

Stopping in 1s is pretty impressive :)

Now to configure it for cnc control...

Will the momentum of the spindle and cutting tool not damage the belt if you continually stop quickly?

[John S]

Probably not the belt but it will shag the keys and keyways up in the back gear unit.

That and the varispeed sheaves which Dave has got rid of are the weak points in these heads.
No idea why anyone wants to stop that quickly anyway, it's not like a Bridgy is a production machine and saving 1 second on 15 auto toolchangers is a game changer

[Davek0974]

Yes, its hard on the head and it sounds hard on the head, thats my reason to slow it down a bit, there really is no point in sudden stop on a machine with splined quill and all that other crap up top ;)

The chances are that most of the dog-clutch wear was caused by my using it for running a 12-1/2" dia fly-cutter when cutting the saddles on the traction engine cylinder block and chimney base and perch-bracket - these would take many hours of running in back-gear and really worked the old girl. It was a job for a HBM really but when you have a Bridgeport you can do pretty much anything;)

The tiny splines and those dodgy dogs are certainly a weak spot, rarely fail but wear a lot and get very vocal, you can wreck the dogs by being a jack-the-lad and changing gear while the spindle is running, would never do this but have seen the carnage caused.

The belt i have fitted is good for something like 60-70hp so i doubt that will be bothered ;)

[Davek0974]

Been messing with rigid tapping - looks like it will be good:)

Also have live spindle speed on screen by changing the DRO from 202 to 39

Have set the vfd display to show load in kW - i could mount the display remotely or fit an analogue 0-10v meter which would show 0-150% of motor power. So far i have not made it go over 600W :)

Getting there.

[Davek0974]

Fun little Sunday morning project to aid my education in Fusion, CAM etc...

Support bracket for the high speed spindle when not in use :)

Junk bits of 15mm ally plate, rigid tapping, chamfers the works ;)

[Davek0974]

Future thoughts...

Machine is working very nicely so far. However I still have big doubts about the weakest link in the system - the Z-axis drive, its a pretty tortured setup, the connection to the quill is poor being just one bolt, the block face is only around 15-20mm square where it bolts on, there is around 75mm from the quill to the ball-screw so there is a massive twisting moment acting on the joint and the ball-nut.

There is already movement visible between the nut and the quill - you can see the connecting arm twisting when nudging the ball-screw pulley by hand so it would be pretty rough under drilling or plunge-milling forces. I can see a very short life for the ball-nut as they don't like twisting moments, axial or radial but not twisting.

It was assembled with loctite but with only the one bolt I doubt that would do much.

I have a feeling it would have been better to go with the drive idea in the pictures below, the quill rack is designed to take all the Bridgeport can do, there is not much backlash and what there is could be helped with a gas-spring maybe to keep it under positive pressure.

No idea what the pinion gearing ratio is but likely something like 3" per turn so would use a bigger reduction from motor.

Just looking ahead, but as i said, I can see issues here already and thats only after a few jobs....