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14-07-2018 #11
Of course, there is a value but you will never make money on a conversion.
Sadly the very flexibility of a Bridgeport is the downfall of a conversion - recently lost a fair bit of stock and time following a simple tool breakage, it was not working well, the homing position was off, just wrong, it took a while to discover that the small tool breakage had nodded and tilted the head by a few degrees in both axes!
It was only a small tool but must have bucked the head as it snapped, a fixed head machine with a table as big as the BP would be lovely but the height goes up due to having all the Z travel in the head not the knee and just won't fit :)
Lesson learnt - re-tram the head every time something happens!
Yes parts are plentiful, power is usable, rpm could do with being higher - currently running 1:1 3Hp motor at 4000rpm, I think she would take 5000 but the motor would not be happy so needs raising to maybe 1:1.5 ratio or so but then bottom end suffers and rigid tapping may not be possible, I was going to fit a servo drive up there but could not figure a suitable size unit that would give speed and torque needed.
Its a lovely machine though, helps even more as i spent so long using her in manual mode as well, get to know the sounds and feel of it so you can spot a CNC tool-path thats a bit over the top ;)
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