Will_c
Well-known member
Hi all,
As mentioned in the thread about building a DIY tiltrotator, I thought I’d start this thread to cover some of my other workshop builds, projects, and attachment builds.
To start with, I’ll go through the retrofit of a CNC Bridgeport Interact.
I paid £600 for the Bridgeport on the condition that I removed it myself from the college workshop. The machine was actually in pretty good condition, as it had been sitting there for quite a while with very little use. It had essentially been retired from use as it was considered unsafe by the college.
The machine was originally fitted with a Heidenhain TNC 151 controller. It would have been possible to drip-feed programs to the control via a laptop, but after doing some research it sounded like this could be quite unreliable with the particular control I had.
Another issue was the power supply. The machine required three-phase power, which meant I would have needed to buy a phase converter to run it. At the time I didn’t want to spend the money on a converter only to find the machine still had control issues.
Instead, I decided to go down the route of retrofitting the control system and converting the machine to run from a single-phase supply so it would be more practical for my workshop.
As mentioned in the thread about building a DIY tiltrotator, I thought I’d start this thread to cover some of my other workshop builds, projects, and attachment builds.
To start with, I’ll go through the retrofit of a CNC Bridgeport Interact.
I paid £600 for the Bridgeport on the condition that I removed it myself from the college workshop. The machine was actually in pretty good condition, as it had been sitting there for quite a while with very little use. It had essentially been retired from use as it was considered unsafe by the college.
The machine was originally fitted with a Heidenhain TNC 151 controller. It would have been possible to drip-feed programs to the control via a laptop, but after doing some research it sounded like this could be quite unreliable with the particular control I had.
Another issue was the power supply. The machine required three-phase power, which meant I would have needed to buy a phase converter to run it. At the time I didn’t want to spend the money on a converter only to find the machine still had control issues.
Instead, I decided to go down the route of retrofitting the control system and converting the machine to run from a single-phase supply so it would be more practical for my workshop.
