Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

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jim2000
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Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by jim2000 »

martyscncgarage wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 2:55 pm Acorn provides step and direction signals to the Gecko GR214v drives. Keep your motors and use the Geckodrives to drive them.

You could buy a new power supply, but you need to find specs on the existing stepper motors. You need to know the current and inductance so you know how to setup the drives and size the power supply. You know they will work at 50vdc. I don't know what the DC buss voltage was for the original steppers. You can search the forum for Bridgeport Boss steppers. It's been done before.
In other words the Acorn board
gives step and direction to the gecko drives to drive my DC motors.
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Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by jim2000 »

jim2000 wrote: Fri Jun 11, 2021 7:50 am
martyscncgarage wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 2:55 pm Acorn provides step and direction signals to the Gecko GR214v drives. Keep your motors and use the Geckodrives to drive them.

You could buy a new power supply, but you need to find specs on the existing stepper motors. You need to know the current and inductance so you know how to setup the drives and size the power supply. You know they will work at 50vdc. I don't know what the DC buss voltage was for the original steppers. You can search the forum for Bridgeport Boss steppers. It's been done before.
In other words the Acorn board
gives step and direction to the gecko drives to drive my DC motors.
found a Boss 5 series 1 retrofit who cured the problem in the following way, I am good with his solution:"For the stepper motor power supply, I chose an Antek 70V 20A (1500 Watt) power supply. This is the biggest wattage they make, and 70V leaves a reasonable margin for the Gecko Stepper Drivers' max voltage (80V). More on them in a bit. I chose 20A so that I could run up to 5 stepper motors quasi-simultaneously without overload. See the Gecko manuals & documentation for calculations on this. You may need less if you only ever run 3 or 4 motors."///

What do you think? I like the 70 VDC at 20amps. So that my steppers can draw more if they need to. I am sure that I am going to ad a 4th axis for a mill bed rotary table, when the rotary table motor rotates to the next spline none of the other motors will be working till the rotary table is finished with the movement.
martyscncgarage
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Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by martyscncgarage »

Acorn outputs step and direction.
Most all drives that take step and direction signals will work. Geckodrive GR214V drives take step and direction
IF your old Boss motors are steppers, I do not know the specs on the steppers, take a cover off and take a picture. I believe they are Superior Electric. Find the specs on the motors, including inductance and winding current and the power supply size (Voltage and Power) can be calculated.

We are making suggestions, not telling you what to do. At the end of the day, after doing your research, you choose what you feel will be best for your build.

If you Google Bridgeport Boss stepper motor specs you will find a lot of information. You might find a common theme on Voltage used, how the windings are wired to the drive. Many people have done the conversion. Doing some detective work with the AHA! control will tell you a lot, pay attention as to how the stepper motor is wired. How is it wired back at the AHA! Controller/stepper drive? I think you already found the AHA! DC Buss voltage to the stepper drives....I would be looking at and taking pictures of the existing control before I tore it all apart and take notes if I were asked to do a conversion.

You never mentioned your budget. But if you are only going to use it a half dozen times a year, I might go with what you have. Down the road if you want to upgrade you can replace the stepper motors and GR214V drives with closed loop servos if you wish.

Also assuming this machine was running with the old AHA! Control and the steppers are good.
Marty
Reminder, for support please follow this post: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=383
We can't "SEE" what you see...
Mesa, AZ
jim2000
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Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by jim2000 »

jim2000 wrote: Fri Jun 11, 2021 7:50 am
martyscncgarage wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 2:55 pm Acorn provides step and direction signals to the Gecko GR214v drives. Keep your motors and use the Geckodrives to drive them.

You could buy a new power supply, but you need to find specs on the existing stepper motors. You need to know the current and inductance so you know how to setup the drives and size the power supply. You know they will work at 50vdc. I don't know what the DC buss voltage was for the original steppers. You can search the forum for Bridgeport Boss steppers. It's been done before.
In other words the Acorn board
gives step and direction to the gecko drives to drive my DC motors.
My VFD needs a voltage from the acorn board 10VDC max=3000rpm 5VDC=1500rpm is the (H8)the analog output for the VFD?
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Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by tblough »

Here's a link to all the Acorn documentation: viewtopic.php?f=60&t=3397

The Acorn Rev 4 Spec Manual will have the information you are looking for.
Cheers,

Tom
Confidence is the feeling you have before you fully understand the situation.
I have CDO. It's like OCD, but the letters are where they should be.
jim2000
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Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by jim2000 »

jim2000 wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 5:40 pm about a year ago I bought a Bridgeport Series 1 CNC machine with the AHA CNC program installed on it. I tried to get the program working to suit my minimal needs. After playing around with the AHA I decided to upgrade to a Acorn board with the free 12 program. I purchased the centroid acorn along with the centroid computer and the 21 inch touchscreen. Had a little trouble installing the software and get to talk to the net but with a little help, was solved in a couple tries. I have a manual Bridgeport and with what we had to do it was enough for the few parts we needed. But now it is time to upgrade the series 1 to a centroid cnc machine. I only need it for a few parts but the parts I need can't be done with the manual machine. I want to use the original drives from the machine they are 4 wire steppers with the big heat sink fins(bipolar?) from the books the motors are max 56 V @ 8 amps max. I measured the voltage at the input to the AHA driver cards it's 50V parallel 3 driver cards from the transformer (pic included). I am sure that this has been done many times before so please let me know what the best driver is to install the old stepper motors, (I purchased a Gecko Raptor GR214V to try) am willing to purchase any other driver that will work. My other question is, has anyone used the AHA motor driver boards with the Acorn motherboard? I do know that the cnc 12 is a windows 10 capable program and I do know that the AHA is a DOS program.

Once the steppers are installed on my Series one machine I will upgrade to Acorn digitizing bundle, which includes the Pro.
Please feel free to ask for info if my wording is not explicit enough.
Jim
863 633 8975
jimhorvath2000@yahoo.com
Here is a guy that has done the job as I am in the process of doing!
Except I want to use Centroid boards and centroid software, because of the support that they have!!!!!!! I tried to talk to mach 3 and it's hard to understand the broken english! Made in America is the right way to go!
I had long wanted to do a retrofit on my Bridgeport BOSS 5 CNC mill. This, along with the BOSS 3, 4, and 6, were late 70's through 80's mills which were purpose built CNC knee mills from Bridgeport. They were not simply manual mill retrofits, but much of the iron was the same. Key differences included a heavier knee and table, and limited X travels so that the center of gravity of the table would never exceed the boundaries of the knee. The iron was well made, but the controls are now quite antiquated. Mine still worked, but had a number of shortcomings. For instance, it could only do coordinated moves in 2 of the 3 axes and had a program size limit of 8kb. 8kb is practically nothing if you're looking to do 3d machining. There was no sense in purchasing CAM software for such a limited program capacity. When I did my first production run of BMW wheel bearing installers, I managed without the improved control, but found many of the shortcomings in the control problematic. I finally decided to pull the trigger on a retrofit.

So what did I choose? Well, the primary options for those of us retrofitting machines with PC based controls are Mach3 (Windows XP based and requiring a paid license -- don't ask me how much, I never bothered to find out) and LinuxCNC (formerly EMC2). As a MythTV user, I already had some Linux exposure, and liked the Ubuntu distribution for its ease of use. When I found out that LinuxCNC ran on a real time version of Ubuntu, I was already sold! Plus it's free! I've now had a version of MythTV running on Ubuntu 10.04 for over 2 years and have not had a hiccup, so gave me confidence that I could get it working without too many headaches.

I researched parts selection for some time, ultimately deciding to make every effort to use the existing spindle speed control, spindle brake, and other external inputs from the machine rather than exclusively use the pc interface. This required figuring out which wires did what. Ultimately, the machine schematics were very helpful, but some probing was still required. With all this in mind, it was clear that I needed stepper motor drivers to run the mammoth NEMA 42 steppers, a power supply for the steppers and the interface board, power for the 24V DC solenoid valves, and power for the lubrication pump and spray mister (120V AC). I also required an interface board to connect all these signals to the computer and a Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) to turn my single phase power to three phase power.


Power Supplies:
For the stepper motor power supply, I chose an Antek 70V 20A (1500 Watt) power supply. This is the biggest wattage they make, and 70V leaves a reasonable margin for the Gecko Stepper Drivers' max voltage (80V). More on them in a bit. I chose 20A so that I could run up to 5 stepper motors quasi-simultaneously without overload. See the Gecko manuals & documentation for calculations on this. You may need less if you only ever run 3 or 4 motors. I chose a version that also had a 2A unregulated 24V DC output, perfect for operating the solenoid valves (that each take roughly 6 Watts, or 0.25A at 24V) and a 12V regulated output, also perfect for supplying an interface board. The interface board would need an on-board regulator to bring that 12V input to 5V, but many boards have that functionality or I could easily build my own. After playing with electronics for a while you tend to have 5V regulators in your 'inventory.' It's a very handy voltage!

I also needed 120V (nominal) and I only had single phase 240V wired to the machine. Incidentally, the machine runs on 30A, 240V. This is plenty of power for our needs, but 120 is not available directly from the mains. So I chose another Antek toroid which would transform the 240V input into 120V output, allowing me to run some relatively low power devices like the lubrication pump and the spray mister. This version also had 18V AC and 12V AC windings, but I didn't need them and just tied them to terminals on a terminal strip to secure them.


Stepper Motor Drivers:
I chose the Gecko G203V's for ease of use, low price, and acceptable performance ratings. They will operate the steppers at up to 7A, 80V. The original Bridgeport motors were wired in series configuration, with 8A and 55V. Thus, the low speed torque is marginally reduced (because it's current limited, not voltage limited -- see the Gecko manuals for a fuller explanation) when the motors are run in series, but the high speed operation is slightly improved due to the higher voltage. In parallel, the low speed torque is substantially reduced due to the lower impedance of the wiring. However, the Geckos are simple to use, cheap, and readily available. I could find numerous affirmations that they ran the Bridgeport steppers just fine. If we wanted absolute maximum speed and power we'd be using servos but that would cost substantially more, and is out of scope for this project! Although the standard NEMA 42's are relatively torquey, should we ever need better performance, we can always retrofit NEMA 34's which have far lower inertia and generate superior torque as compared with the original steppers. A true win-win, and only ~ $120 each plus shipping.

These also have 10 micro steps by default. Initially I was concerned because I knew that these motors would not respond well to microstepping, as there is a high detent torque between motor steps. However, I realized that if the machine would only move accurately between one step and the next, it won't be any less accurate than having whole step drivers. At present, 1 step = 0.001" so any distance less than 0.001" is not considered reliable. Certainly no worse than the original control!


Interface Board:
Here's the million dollar question: Do we use a simple 'breakout board' and rely on software stepping of the parallel port, or use a hardware solution? I chose to use a hardware based solution from Pico Systems called the Universal Stepper Controller (USC) board. The USC board offers a number of advantages. First, if your computer has a lot of variation in its timing (often from video card drivers, etc), there is a risk that the machine will lose steps because it can't give the next step before the inertia of the table pushes past the stepper's holding torque (when moving). If you set the pulse speed slow enough that this is unlikely, then you may not be able to go as fast as the machine is capable of moving. Further, a single parallel port (though you can add more) is limited in the number of inputs and outputs it can provide. I like to have total control, so I didn't want to compromise on I/O. It is also possible to add a second USC board through the same parallel port connection, further expanding the available I/O. Just the ticket! I must also add that Jon Elson of Pico Systems was extremely helpful throughout the process. His customer service is excellent and he is very knowledgeable. You can't go wrong.

I also purchased his 60V 15mA Solid State Relays (SSR's) for control of the VFD's direction inputs. Finally, I sprung for the Pico Systems DAC board to (ultimately) enable frequency control of the VFD, which will enable total speed control! This outputs an analog signal from 0-10 volts upon command from LinuxCNC. The VFD, when properly configured, will read this voltage and adjust its output frequency. This is one easy way to adjust speed, and can be used if you don't have the air powered spindle speed option. I plan to mount an encoder on the spindle and use a hybrid method to achieve spindle speed control, using the solenoid valves and the VFD to achieve automatic speed adjustment. This is a bit more difficult than the standard closed loop spindle speed control examples shown on the LinuxCNC wiki, and may require that I program my own LinuxCNC component. We'll see, I haven't gotten there yet!


Variable Frequency Drive:
What better way to get rid of your noisy rotary phase converter than to use a VFD? I could have gone cheaper, but Hitachi drives have an excellent reputation and the WJ200 series are fully featured. They should enable virtually any function I could want, including analog speed input, and digital direction control. Running a three phase motor on single phase power has never been easier!


Conclusion:
I've attached a spreadsheet in PDF form of all the purchases I made to complete the project. I can say that I could have bought more cheaply in some areas, but I tend to try to do it right. Of course, I included things like a full case of both cabinet filters, which certainly adds to the cost, but isn't strictly necessary. Keep in mind that it's probably an item you wouldn't think of changing, so it doesn't hurt to factor it into the plan. I suspect, for me at least, that 12 of each will be a lifetime supply!
jim2000
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Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by jim2000 »

martyscncgarage wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 12:08 pm Yes, for an infrequently used machine (you might find you use it more when you get used to the control and learn to use INTERCON, Conversational programming) I think Acorn and keeping the existing steppers should be OK.
You say you did CONFIRM the power supply voltage to the existing AHA! drivers?
You might keep the power supply and reuse it with the GR214V drives. Otherwise antekinc.com is a good source for a power supply.
You will need to find out the current for the stepper motors. The AHA! control might offer a clue if you have documentation for it.
Marty
Hi Marty;
Found quite a few people that converted their Bridgeport and kept the original NEMA 42 motors on their machines, it would help to a few people that are in the same position that I am in. What do you think?
jim2000
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Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by jim2000 »

BRIDGEPORT Series 1 CNC Conversion Acorn Board, Gecko Drivers INFORMATION, keeping original Nema 42 Motors
Will post information as I am learning and doing it. Thanx to martyscncgarage for pointing me in the right direction.
I have been doing machining since learning lathe and CNC mill in high school. I'm a motorhead and built a lot of cars and modified airplanes and helicopters. I have a 8 inch lathe and a mechanical Bridgeport with X, Y axis feed. But it is impossible to make complex parts on them without full automation. So I bought a Bridgeport Series 1 CNC machine that was the beginning of the CNC era. With the help from all the postings and marty I am sort of in the right direction. I am in the helicopter research and development arena and not in business, but need some parts that we make on our Bridgeports and lathe. If anyone has info or wants info please text me.
This is a retrofit by a guy that I am learning some of the info from! I disagree with some of his build but I am not in business and will only be using my conversion maybe 1 or 2 days a month.
My BOSS 5 prior to retrofit
I had long wanted to do a retrofit on my Bridgeport BOSS 5 CNC mill. This, along with the BOSS 3, 4, and 6, were late 70's through 80's mills which were purpose built CNC knee mills from Bridgeport. They were not simply manual mill retrofits, but much of the iron was the same. Key differences included a heavier knee and table, and limited X travels so that the center of gravity of the table would never exceed the boundaries of the knee. The iron was well made, but the controls are now quite antiquated. Mine still worked, but had a number of shortcomings. For instance, it could only do coordinated moves in 2 of the 3 axes and had a program size limit of 8kb. 8kb is practically nothing if you're looking to do 3d machining. There was no sense in purchasing CAM software for such a limited program capacity. When I did my first production run of BMW wheel bearing installers, I managed without the improved control, but found many of the shortcomings in the control problematic. I finally decided to pull the trigger on a retrofit.

So what did I choose? Well, the primary options for those of us retrofitting machines with PC based controls are Mach3 (Windows XP based and requiring a paid license -- don't ask me how much, I never bothered to find out) and LinuxCNC (formerly EMC2). As a MythTV user, I already had some Linux exposure, and liked the Ubuntu distribution for its ease of use. When I found out that LinuxCNC ran on a real time version of Ubuntu, I was already sold! Plus it's free! I've now had a version of MythTV running on Ubuntu 10.04 for over 2 years and have not had a hiccup, so gave me confidence that I could get it working without too many headaches.

I researched parts selection for some time, ultimately deciding to make every effort to use the existing spindle speed control, spindle brake, and other external inputs from the machine rather than exclusively use the pc interface. This required figuring out which wires did what. Ultimately, the machine schematics were very helpful, but some probing was still required. With all this in mind, it was clear that I needed stepper motor drivers to run the mammoth NEMA 42 steppers, a power supply for the steppers and the interface board, power for the 24V DC solenoid valves, and power for the lubrication pump and spray mister (120V AC). I also required an interface board to connect all these signals to the computer and a Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) to turn my single phase power to three phase power.


Power Supplies:
For the stepper motor power supply, I chose an Antek 70V 20A (1500 Watt) power supply. This is the biggest wattage they make, and 70V leaves a reasonable margin for the Gecko Stepper Drivers' max voltage (80V). More on them in a bit. I chose 20A so that I could run up to 5 stepper motors quasi-simultaneously without overload. See the Gecko manuals & documentation for calculations on this. You may need less if you only ever run 3 or 4 motors. I chose a version that also had a 2A unregulated 24V DC output, perfect for operating the solenoid valves (that each take roughly 6 Watts, or 0.25A at 24V) and a 12V regulated output, also perfect for supplying an interface board. The interface board would need an on-board regulator to bring that 12V input to 5V, but many boards have that functionality or I could easily build my own. After playing with electronics for a while you tend to have 5V regulators in your 'inventory.' It's a very handy voltage!

I also needed 120V (nominal) and I only had single phase 240V wired to the machine. Incidentally, the machine runs on 30A, 240V. This is plenty of power for our needs, but 120 is not available directly from the mains. So I chose another Antek toroid which would transform the 240V input into 120V output, allowing me to run some relatively low power devices like the lubrication pump and the spray mister. This version also had 18V AC and 12V AC windings, but I didn't need them and just tied them to terminals on a terminal strip to secure them.


Stepper Motor Drivers:
I chose the Gecko G203V's for ease of use, low price, and acceptable performance ratings. They will operate the steppers at up to 7A, 80V. The original Bridgeport motors were wired in series configuration, with 8A and 55V. Thus, the low speed torque is marginally reduced (because it's current limited, not voltage limited -- see the Gecko manuals for a fuller explanation) when the motors are run in series, but the high speed operation is slightly improved due to the higher voltage. In parallel, the low speed torque is substantially reduced due to the lower impedance of the wiring. However, the Geckos are simple to use, cheap, and readily available. I could find numerous affirmations that they ran the Bridgeport steppers just fine. If we wanted absolute maximum speed and power we'd be using servos but that would cost substantially more, and is out of scope for this project! Although the standard NEMA 42's are relatively torquey, should we ever need better performance, we can always retrofit NEMA 34's which have far lower inertia and generate superior torque as compared with the original steppers. A true win-win, and only ~ $120 each plus shipping.

These also have 10 micro steps by default. Initially I was concerned because I knew that these motors would not respond well to microstepping, as there is a high detent torque between motor steps. However, I realized that if the machine would only move accurately between one step and the next, it won't be any less accurate than having whole step drivers. At present, 1 step = 0.001" so any distance less than 0.001" is not considered reliable. Certainly no worse than the original control!


Interface Board:
Here's the million dollar question: Do we use a simple 'breakout board' and rely on software stepping of the parallel port, or use a hardware solution? I chose to use a hardware based solution from Pico Systems called the Universal Stepper Controller (USC) board. The USC board offers a number of advantages. First, if your computer has a lot of variation in its timing (often from video card drivers, etc), there is a risk that the machine will lose steps because it can't give the next step before the inertia of the table pushes past the stepper's holding torque (when moving). If you set the pulse speed slow enough that this is unlikely, then you may not be able to go as fast as the machine is capable of moving. Further, a single parallel port (though you can add more) is limited in the number of inputs and outputs it can provide. I like to have total control, so I didn't want to compromise on I/O. It is also possible to add a second USC board through the same parallel port connection, further expanding the available I/O. Just the ticket! I must also add that Jon Elson of Pico Systems was extremely helpful throughout the process. His customer service is excellent and he is very knowledgeable. You can't go wrong.

I also purchased his 60V 15mA Solid State Relays (SSR's) for control of the VFD's direction inputs. Finally, I sprung for the Pico Systems DAC board to (ultimately) enable frequency control of the VFD, which will enable total speed control! This outputs an analog signal from 0-10 volts upon command from LinuxCNC. The VFD, when properly configured, will read this voltage and adjust its output frequency. This is one easy way to adjust speed, and can be used if you don't have the air powered spindle speed option. I plan to mount an encoder on the spindle and use a hybrid method to achieve spindle speed control, using the solenoid valves and the VFD to achieve automatic speed adjustment. This is a bit more difficult than the standard closed loop spindle speed control examples shown on the LinuxCNC wiki, and may require that I program my own LinuxCNC component. We'll see, I haven't gotten there yet!


Variable Frequency Drive:
What better way to get rid of your noisy rotary phase converter than to use a VFD? I could have gone cheaper, but Hitachi drives have an excellent reputation and the WJ200 series are fully featured. They should enable virtually any function I could want, including analog speed input, and digital direction control. Running a three phase motor on single phase power has never been easier!


Conclusion:
I've attached a spreadsheet in PDF form of all the purchases I made to complete the project. I can say that I could have bought more cheaply in some areas, but I tend to try to do it right. Of course, I included things like a full case of both cabinet filters, which certainly adds to the cost, but isn't strictly necessary. Keep in mind that it's probably an item you wouldn't think of changing, so it doesn't hurt to factor it into the plan. I suspect, for me at least, that 12 of each will be a lifetime supply!
jim2000
Posts: 29
Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 2:00 pm
Acorn CNC Controller: No
Allin1DC CNC Controller: No
Oak CNC controller: No
CNC Control System Serial Number: none
DC3IOB: No
CNC12: Yes
CNC11: No
CPU10 or CPU7: No

Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by jim2000 »

jim2000 wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 12:50 pm Marty.
I just re checked the power from the AHA transformer going to the AHA driver boards and its 50VDC, does Acorn do DC for the motors or do I have to change to the Oak CNC Controller, or the ALL in 1 controller?
I believe that if one does any conversion one needs customer support!! The only major customer support for lathe or milling machine is CENTROID so in my opinion this is the only way to go and it is also a the most inexpensive way to go with a conversion! Thank you for the support and the people that do the online free support!

Jim

:D
jim2000
Posts: 29
Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 2:00 pm
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Oak CNC controller: No
CNC Control System Serial Number: none
DC3IOB: No
CNC12: Yes
CNC11: No
CPU10 or CPU7: No

Re: Bridgeport Series 1 CNC conversion to Acorn etc.

Post by jim2000 »

So far I have torn out the whole Bridgeport electrical cabinet except the incoming fused 3 way(240Single phase) on/of switch. Re-Mounted the Acorn board because the whole system is starting to take shape(at least in my mind). According to martyscncgarage, I purchased a new transformer from Antekinc.com for $250- Power,1500W Output Voltage Current70V@21.4A,24V@2A,5V@1A. From geckodrives I purchased 4 -GR214V (the bulletproof version) for $151 ea. One used Bridgeport stepper DC motor with the big cooling fins for $150 for my 4th axis, this will be the horizontal table turret. I printed out all the needed Acorn electrical plans that are on the centroid website and enlarged them and laminated them for future use.
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