Good luck with your project whatever way you decide to go. and i would drive the knee as opposed to the quill but this may limit you in terms of doing contour work as driving the knee is difficult at speed. also do not skimp on ball screws, i have seen just ball screw kits for bridgeports. now ultimately you don't "NEED" these to run, but for safety sakes i wouldn't run a mill without them.įor a bridgeport i would get at least a NEMA 34 servo motor and to run mach 3 get US digital encoders. the hard thing to come up with really are the limit switches and home switches. You will need a spacer to keep pulley off.
#Bridge port cnc conversion series
Modified the stepper motor hole yourself to fit your pulley system, this is more than big enough for my L series 16t. Bridgeport and bridgeport cnc conversion plates if you have the 3 bolt star pattern bearing retainers. i would also get servo motors as opposed to stepper motors, and mach 3 is pretty good for a DIY controller and runs on PC. Bridge Port CNC conversion mount plates X Y- nema 34.
if your doing it for hobby work then by all means convert it yourself and you'll save about 10,000. luckily i have another mill, but don't forget to add your time into the equation if you need this to make money. i bought a kit minus wiring and between running my business and other commitments, getting this mill running has taken about 6 months. There is a big difference between peicing your own kit together and buying one.
For that much you can get a Haas TM1, a much more capable machine, or save your pennies and sneak into a VMC, Sharp and Bridgeport have smaller models for less than $40k.īut if you have questions about doing the retrofit yourself, fire away. However new turn key CNC knee mills are too expensive for what you get, typically $20k to $25k, and at least around here used ones in good shape don't go for much less than that. The design was based on various elements I learned about from the similar projects others have attempted, with a few of my own improvisations and innovations. But econonically unless you have some free time to burn most times you're probably better off buying a turn key machine rather than retrofitting one. I designed and built my own Bridgeport milling machine CNC controls (X, Y, and Z axes).
Keep in mind though that its a fair amount of effort to get a retrofit done with this approach, I went this way because I had a strong interest in learning about CNC machines from the inside out, and I ended up with a great machine.
#Bridge port cnc conversion Pc
If you have more time than money and feel comfortable working with electronics and PC's, you can do a PC conversion using the Mach PC based controller from. They're great machines for some usage, my BP clone CNC machine does everything I need it to for prototyping and small run production, but I'm in a special "in house use only" situation, you generally can't compete with other job shops with this kind of machine unless you specialize in prototypes and very small runs or one offs only.
#Bridge port cnc conversion code
One potential issue on all these conversions is G code capability, check and make sure they support that, in the past some of these systems only supported the companies "conversational" commands.Īs Airborne pointed out, CNC knee mills are in a no man's land in terms of price/performance. I would only consider a 3 axis conversion, you lose way too much capability with a 2 axis conversion. Also check out the Prototrak conversion kits:
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