Planning - Bridgeport Interact 1 linuxCNC Retrofit

It's great, really happy with everything.

I'd like to pitch in on the VFD and second the chinese drive route.

My motor is a 330V, my line is 230-ish, I didn't want to deal with step up converters or rotary phase converters, didn't have the money for it either. Everything else on machine was pretty straightforward, because only two legs of 3 phase are used for transformers and motor amps. Since I am never planning on running the machine full blast production, I was ok with losing some top end on spindle, but wanted to keep the low end torque.
V/Hz is a pretty common way to get what you are looking for out of the motor, so I got a 2.2kW 220V HY drive off ebay and adjusted the settings for V/Hz curve and max current, so far seems to be doing just fine for feeds I am working at.

cncnoob1979 wrote: So that leaves a question, All my DC relays have diodes wired into the mounting base of the relays, It wouldn't hurt to just leave them there would it? Or should I removed them since they are now mounted inside of the relays?

You might as well leave them there as backup in case the pixies steal the ones in the relays.

I am in the middle of doing a retrofit on the same machine. Over the holidays I installed the new controller and powered it up. Overall things have gone well, all of the controls work and the servos are tuned and working smoothly. But I ran into a big glitch with the encoders. I am using the original ERO-115 encoders and 4 EXE 602D interpolation boxes. The scale is off and also inconsistent. I looked at the A B quadrature signals with halscope and they look bogus (inconsistent phase, symmetry). I am surprised it works as well as it does. Not sure what is wrong.

Being farther down the path I can probably save you quite a bit of time. I would be happy to share details about my configuration and the land mines I ran into. I created a custom GUI with a touchscreen that you might want to look at.

Chris

I recommend leaving in the relay diodes. They will not cause any problems and will keep open the option of putting old-style relays back in. Were the relays missing?

Most of the relays could be omitted and the logic handled in software. I considered bypassing most of the relays and implementing the functions in software. That would have been a more flexible approach with better visibility of what is going on in the machine. But I determined it was too much work. But if you don't have the relays it may make sense.

csbrady,

I actually fried my relays I posted about it a few pages back.

I plan on using 601C or 702B exe boxes. The 601C can do 5 fold and the 702's can as well.

Hopefully I won't run into your issue. Have you tried a different exe model? I was reading through your posts a bit ago.

I would love to get your files for the custom panel. I definitely like your setup. What size monitor did you go with and how did you mount it? That is my next job.

Also, did you build a custom panel for the space the original controller was installed in? Looks nice.

For the VFD you only need a 2 HP unit. I used a Hitachi SJ200 from AutomationDirect with good success. A larger unit may be more difficult to fit into the cabinet. I added external braking resistors and put an encoder on the spindle.