Ignoramus26960 wrote:

On 2010-02-24, Karl Townsend wrote:

Long story short, don't go in to this thinking its a quick easy job.
You'll
also spend a fair bit of bucks on servo drivers that work with EMC and
run
your servos.

Karl, if you can give me a rundown of what I would need/how much time
it will take/how much it will cost, it would be greatly appreciated.

The major cost here will be your time. A lot to learn. My pure guess would
be about two man months. The more equipment you can reuse the more you save
and the more time you'll spend. Its easier to do a simple machine first,
this one isn't it. Look in to how you do the servo drives with the
Heidenhein scales and what all you'll need to interface all the I/O to your
Linux box. These will be the two largest costs.

You'll end up with a machine you control from a computer keyboard - fine for
hobby work. Most of my experience is with refitting a machine so its a
professional job that is better than new. Costs easily run 15K to do this.


So, Karl, what would you (with your skills and all) do with this
bridgeport, would you just try to restore its Interact 2 controls?

i

My recommendation would be to use the existing controls if it's a simple
thing like replacing a monitor. Then investigate those controls to see
if the servo drives and encoders would be reusable and plan the EMC2 or
Mach3 retrofit while you use the current controls. When the current
controls finally die and can't be repaired you'll be ready for the
retrofit.