Hello all, I am new to this forum, finding it by way of accident while searching for info on retrofitting my BOSS 5 CNC. Some background. I own a small machine shop with 3 Bridgeport CNC's, one original BOSS 6 Series II, a Centroid Retrofitted BOSS 9 R2E3, and a retrofitted BOSS 5. In 2000, I retrofitted my ailing BOSS 5 with a cheap control replacement because the overall cost was less than the replacement cost of the board that was bad. The kit came from MachineMaster, and included an Ah-Ha Design Group interface board and a small plug-in card, which, when coupled with a 486 computer replaced ALL of the control boards in the BOSS 5. Very simple installation - re-wiring the limit switches and limit override switch, adding a new Cycle Start and Hold button and a few other minor mods. It has worked slick as could be for the last 17 years, but quit suddenly after a holiday shutdown. After much investigation and conferring with former Bridgeport service technicians, I have decided that the Ah-Ha interface board (IF16, in case you were wondering) is kaput, or possibly, the small proprietary "break-out" board that actually plugged into a card slot in the CNC.. Everything else checks out. So, the hard reality is unless a miracle occurs and I find a new IF16 board that I can afford, I need to re-retrofit my machine with another system. Another hard reality is I need to do it for the lease possible cost. I have read about Mach3 (or 4) and Gecko Boards, and PMDX breakout boards, and a lot of other things, but am fairly clueless where to start. I am hoping that someone has done something that was not bank-breaking expensive and worked well. I read one blog where a Bridgeport CNC was basically totally gutted, and some of the internal electronics were hacked to adjust voltages, etc, but I am not that confident. I like the idea of using LINUX CNC to run the machine, but I really need a machine to run, if you know what I mean.
I would be very pleased if anyone could offer guidance with this project.
