On 2010-05-31, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:
Ignoramus28053 fired this volley in
:

Lloyd, I meant to ask you, how do you like your R2E4? Are you using
the original control?


Yep, although at some future date, I wish to upgrade it to EMC^2, add a
4th axis, and some other niggling things. But yes... it's a nice
machine. Kind of klunky and a bit prone to connector failures now and
again -- but I'm not doing any production work with it.

The only concessions to modernity on it right now are the changes I made
to the motor drive and power supply connections. I added a slow-start
VFC to the drive, and now signal reversals through the VFC, instead of
switch-reversing it, and speed is still selected pneumatically with the
variable sheaves, ranges manually by the shift lever. I also rewired the
PS for single phase -- so the whole machine is on 240V single now, and
most satisfactory.

The electronics are old, but pretty stable, the monitor has but a little
burn, and mechanically, the machine is almost brand new. Hardly any wear
at all in the ways.

I had some old scans of the manuals, and they were adequate for making
the changes, but recently Dave Blank dug up some original BP manuals, and
kindly sent them. So... I'm "fully equipped", except for having enough
of the 30-type tool holders.

Cool. I do not have such a luxury of having a working control, and
will be retrofitting. My iron is also in a good shape with hardly any
wear.

Are your holders QC-30?

i