Is there a Megasquirt equivalent for CNC tools?

I can get my hands on a mid-80's Bridgeport CNC mill for somewhere between cheap and free. It has decent iron, a good motor, etc., but the controls are trash. It runs intermittently, and poorly when it does. It is basically worthless if you want to rely on it.

Now, there are conversion kits out there for $3-12K that allow you to abandon all of the mid-80's BS electronics, and run it off of a PC. I like the concept, but don't love dropping the coin (I know, I know - Bitching about a CNC in my basement for ~5K +/-).

Does anyone know of an open source, megasquirt-like solution for CNC retrofits?

Dad's been looking into this stuff and found that the scale engine folks (the ones that build replica steam engines, etc) have some interesting solutions. The problem isn't rebuilding the controls systems or the position sensors, etc it is controlling the whole mess where things fall down since many times it is designed and built by machinists, not software folks.

I'll try to dig up some links....

Something from these guys is probably the closest thing to what you are looking for, there are also DIY open source plans but from what I saw they aren't very well developed.

http://www.hobbycnc.com/

I've seen them in the past, sorry I don't have a link.

There's also an open source DRO (digital read out) out there for $100 - $200. There used to be a Yahoo group on it.

I got one of those for my baja team for cheap. The department converted it to run off of a computer and then the main spindle motor pooped. Cheap CNC's are not exactly cheap.. I think we paid $7k for the mill. It had a really sweet tool changer and tooling with it but man.. If we weren't in it for triple that after all was done and she was running parts.

ignorant wrote: I got one of those for my baja team for cheap. The department converted it to run off of a computer and then the main spindle motor pooped. Cheap CNC's are not exactly cheap.. I think we paid $7k for the mill. It had a really sweet tool changer and tooling with it but man.. If we weren't in it for triple that after all was done and she was running parts.

Yeah, I can pick up a mid-late 90's Haas with tool changer for under $20K, so I wouldn't want to be into the old Bridgeport for more than a few thousand.

Is this a VMC or a converted Knee mill? We had a VMC w/ "flood" coolant setup. Once setup that bad boy would turn out a nice part, as nice as the more expensive stuff down the hall(well.. mostly.. the Hardinge did have like some stupid stupid spindle speed option.. 20 or 30krpm something like that.. )

check out this magazine page.. Might have some info. Their sister publication is Home Shop Machinist which is GREAT!

http://www.digitalmachinist.net/

or this

http://www.bmumford.com/cncmill/index.html

That's the stuff I was thinking of! Thanks guys!

ignorant wrote: Is this a VMC or a converted Knee mill? We had a VMC w/ "flood" coolant setup. Once setup that bad boy would turn out a nice part, as nice as the more expensive stuff down the hall(well.. mostly.. the Hardinge did have like some stupid stupid spindle speed option.. 20 or 30krpm something like that.. )

It's not a converted knee mill, but a factory CNC knee mill. Bridgeport R2E4. 18 x 12 x 6 IIRC. Manual tool change. 5000RPM max with a CVT speed control. Nothing fancy.

Nearly identical to this -

Dave, there's a few examples of DIY CNC on Make magazine's website, here's one example:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/06/how_to_make_a_three_axis.html

Go to their home page and search for "CNC"

ohh... cool.. I found this from the makezine link..

very helpful. Probably what dave is looking for. http://www.cnczone.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=48

DILYSI Dave wrote:

ignorant wrote: Is this a VMC or a converted Knee mill? We had a VMC w/ "flood" coolant setup. Once setup that bad boy would turn out a nice part, as nice as the more expensive stuff down the hall(well.. mostly.. the Hardinge did have like some stupid stupid spindle speed option.. 20 or 30krpm something like that.. )

It's not a converted knee mill, but a factory CNC knee mill. Bridgeport R2E4. 18 x 12 x 6 IIRC. Manual tool change. 5000RPM max with a CVT speed control. Nothing fancy. Nearly identical to this -

Thats a cool machine. Ours was just like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPoowX1gy5c