Originally Posted by
AdeV
Hi Folks, this is my first post here at the CNC Zone, although I'm an active member on a couple of other machinist websites.
I've been doing hobby machining for about 3 years now. A couple of months back, I acquired a Bridgeport Interact 1 Mk 2 with TNC150 controller. I've since acquired another one in better overall condition with a TNC151B (I think -- how do I tell if it's an A or B?). I plan to use this machine for various hobby bits, as well as some race car bits which I hope I can use to pay off what the machines have cost me.
So far, all is going reasonably well. 1st machine has a few faults (coolant motor doesn't work, spindle cooling motor doesn't work, noisy bearings, tacho problems when cold, I have to run the spindle at low RPMs for a few mins, going straight to 4000rpm from cold over-speeds the motor badly. 2nd machine showed a tacho error yesterday (spindle twitched & then wouldn't run), but after 5 mins warming the electronics up, all worked as normal.
I've run a few hand-written programs in Heidenhain Conversational -but eventually I'd like to move over to a CAD/CAM system. So, I'm now attempting to learn to draw in SolidWorks, but what CAM system would people recommend for this machine?
I'm reasonably adept with my old manual Bridgeport, and I've got a half a lifetime of programming computers behind me - so putting the two together doesn't worry me. So far, the new machine has made only wax chips (the original one has made a few aluminium chips, but not many).
I'll probably have lots of questions later... e.g has anyone tried updating this machine to use PC-based controls? I'm wondering about doing that to my TNC150 machine, or whether to just polish it up, fix the spindle fan motor & put it back on a certain well known auction site...
Cheers!
Ade.