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Much of what I know about the factory steppers came from postings made by "Boss5" over on the CNCZone forum:
www.cnczone.com/forums/bridgeport-hardin...ills/210116-cnc.html

Thanks for the advice about SteppersOnline. Where do people typically buy their China-brand steppers and drives? Is there a better source I should investigate?

I've certainly looked into Gecko for the drives. However, to my knowledge, they don't build drives that are a proper match for my steppers.

Thanks for the response!

The original drives are Bridgeport cards plugged into a backplane and mounted to a three foot heatsink. These apparently take "quadrature" inputs - not "step and direction?"

I'm not sure who made the original motors. I've been unable to find any markings/tags on them (maybe I need to unscrew the back plate, and look inside?). From what I've read, Bridgeport used a couple of different brands of steppers on these - either "Sigma" or "Superior." Apparently, they are "high voltage" steppers, and require a "high voltage" drive to run.

Thanks for your response!

This machine has an auto oiler on it - so that will be one of the first things I mess with to ensure it's working correctly. I've seen some people state that the oiler nozzles on these machines can become clogged with gunk from sitting for so long.

Yep, the first order of business will be to remove the two big control cabinets from it, and vacuum all of the "man glitter" off if it, and give it a bath and a lube!

I'm looking at replacing the steppers for several reasons. Based upon the information I've found about these machines on various forums:
* The steppers are an old design. They apparently ran at a higher voltage than most modern steppers. This requires special drives (like a DM1182). For less than the cost of a suitable "high voltage" drive, I can buy modern steppers with matching drives and power supplies:
www.omc-stepperonline.com/ys-series-3-ax...ower-supply-3-clys90
* Given the age of the steppers, many people are stating that they are likely weak - due to the age of their magnets and the type of magnets they used.
* From what I understand, these steppers are not closed-loop.
* Again, according to others, these steppers are "notchy" and "jumpy". They aren't as smooth as modern steppers, and don't have the accuracy/resolution (though, they are probably plenty accurate for my needs).

I'm sure that some "Double-E" out there could figure out how to connect a RPi's GPIO to the existing stepper drives. However, that's well beyond my level of expertise. The existing drives are cards that are plugged into a sort of backplane. They have Bridgeport's name on the boards, so I assume that they are proprietary. There's a document floating around, which explains how to reuse the existing stepper drives and steppers with Mach 3:
manuals.chudov.com/Bridgeport/Series-I/H...Boss_6_to_Mach_3.pdf

This looks like something I could absolutely do (substituting LinuxCNC for Mach 3). I could pick up one of Byte 2 Bot's parallel port hats, and run a BoB to drive the original Bridgeport electronics. However, it also seems like a lot of work to go through - just to rely on ancient, obsolete drives, steppers, and power supplies. In the end, I have an "oddball" system that is difficult to support. These original drives were also known to run pretty hot.

(AXIS,hide) / (AXIS,show) works fine

I didn't tried [#<_task> EQ 1], but will test soon and report

thanks a lot guys

I am terribly sorry about saying the inhibit being pullea high, I opened the manual and you are correct, its low.
Like you said lcnc will not have a feedback for the enable signal itself from those drives, it just assumes they enable when commanded.
Go with the e-stop approach or use one output to turn on/off the existing relay.

ContinenteCNC wrote:

Hi Craig!

Those are insane machines! Great job!

Are them all controlled by LinuxCNC?

 
We created our own real-time system under Windows.
The axis interface was a PCI board with 12 DACs (16bit) and 24 quadrature encoder interfaces (we do dual-loop feedback) so this was PC-Based.

I have thousands of CNC tube-bender controls, worldwide.

Had enough of the PC and so now we switched to microcontrollers but with an Android-based HMI.

This year, I intend to introduce a TRUE open-source CNC metal forming control that utilizes ubiquitous hardware that anyone can obtain for pennies

All axes controlled by the RPi Pico. Any number of axes.
HMI can be any Android device such as phone, tablet, or panel-pc.

It's time that this stuff was simplified 

Thanks a lot, I'll try asap

What drives/motors does it use?

I ordered two more of those PCI-E Sunix boards, so more testing ...

forum.linuxcnc.org/10-advanced-configura...to-example-mesa-7i77

Since 2008 I have been using linuxcnc, I remember running into a problem in the G85 code (it was malfunctioning). I am an expert in cnc technology and I am very used to the G-code in all the controllers that exist. I remember entering the forum and raising the problem and it was immediately solved. This experience was never repeated. I'm not complaining, I'm posing a problem! It seems that for some members (luckily not all) the linuxcnc Forum has become a place where users must have knowledge of github, programming, compilation, editing, etc. every time the solution to a problem is blocked. In order for linuxcnc to continue improving, they must accept the Forum as a place where they can find the problems to be solved, because this is where the users who are using the application are located. I'm really tired of members who impose their hierarchy of knowledge on those who don't have it.
For my part, nothing more to talk about in this thread. Thank you!!!

i'm doing the same in github.com/yur7aev/linuxcnc/tree/nyx2.9/configs/nyx/argo like that:

o<m6> sub
(AXIS,hide)
... tool change with out of limit z move ...
(AXIS,show)
o<m6> endsub [1] ; signal success
m2

You can test   if [#<_task> EQ 1]    to skip this sequence in preview

Hi All,

Good day. Managed to wire the ENA to the servo drive enable.

My current problem is overshoot. lets say I command it y5, it will go until y6 then go back to y5. Overshoot increases as feed speed increases. I estimate it to be 1mm per 100mmpm. so 100mmpm has an overshoot of 1mm, 300mmpm has an overshoot of 3mm.

PID settings are
P = 1.5 (If i add more, it shakes at higher speed)
I = 0
D = 0 (any increase and the system shakes)
FF0 = 0
FF1 = 1
FF2 = 0
Scale : 1225 (0.01 accuracy even with overshoots)

Regards,
Kibin

Hi All,

Good day. Managed to wire the ENA to the servo drive enable.

My current problem is overshoot. It is overshooting. lets say I command it y5, it will go until y6 then go back to y5. Overshoot increases as feed speed increases. I estimate it to be 1mm per 100mmpm. so 100mmpm has an overshoot of 1mm, 300mmpm has an overshoot of 3mm.

PID settings are
P = 1.5 (If i add more, it shakes at higher speed)
I = 0
D = 0 (any increase and the system shakes)

Scale : 1225 (0.01 accuracy even with overshoots)