Bridgeport Interact 1 mk2 retrofit

All things related to the Centroid Acorn CNC Controller

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NitroExpress577
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:13 pm
Acorn CNC Controller: Yes
Allin1DC CNC Controller: No
Oak CNC controller: No
CNC Control System Serial Number: none
DC3IOB: No
CNC12: Yes
CNC11: No
CPU10 or CPU7: No

Bridgeport Interact 1 mk2 retrofit

Post by NitroExpress577 »

Good afternoon members

Thank you for letting me join your forum

I'm about to order my Acorn Controller - and have a question or 2

Little bit of background

We bought this machine in 2016 - it still had all the original Heidenhain control and DC Brushed servos motors - but the controller was dead. Growing up in a machine shop i can honestly say that this machine was in an immaculate condition. The idea was to retrofit this machine to allow for more complex 3 axis milling on wood. Currently our 2 cnc mills operate daily machining our firearm parts from 4140/431/416 steel.

In short we paid someone to retrofit the machine with Mesa Hardware - still keeping the original DC brushed servos. The machine was unreliable and kept on toasting the mesa cards. not to badmouth Mesa - they repaired the boards without any issue/charge and always had good customer service. But the machine was not operable and was just sitting in my workshop gathering dust and scrap steel.

In 2019 a friend in the USA stared retrofitting his CNC mill with Centroid and Dyn2 drives/motors - I was impressed at how quickly he got his machine up and running and still running today. I contacted DMM and gave them my Mesa hardware list hoping to salvage some of the mesa cards and use it with their Dyn 4 servos/drives.

Covid then hit us and i had to to delay the retrofit - as DMM's motors do not fit the Bridgeport i had to machine new mounting plates while catching up on work. At the end of last year i started retrofitting the new motors to the machine and connecting it to the Mesa 7i33ta card. keep in mind the 7i33ta card is a +- 10v Analog servo amp board.

I have just about given up on the Mesa /DMM Dyn 4 combo - it has been frustrating to say the least and want to chuck this beautiful machine outside and let nature take its course. I get emi noise from the x axis which the translates into the z axis. We have changed the Shielded cable , rerouted them away from the 3phase power cable - increases/decrease the distance between drives etc.

I decided to try the Centroid Acorn route to see if that gets my machine up and running - this machine is already costing me more than $7k and i either need to sort it out or strip it and sell the parts/machine.

My question is - Currently my Mesa hardware, pc and DMM drives are in the same cabinet which is mounted to the machine. will this be correct for Centroid or should we remove the control cabinet from the machine and mount it to the wall. trying not run into similar EMI noise problems with the Centroid hardware.

Having read a bit on forum and Facebook, it seems DMM Dyn 4 are not the best drives , per some members experience, but i'm stuck with them and would really get them to work. And no i'm not using DMM 's DB 25 cables - we wired our own cables as per DMM's diagrams.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Regards from South Africa.

R
martyscncgarage
Posts: 9912
Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:01 pm
Acorn CNC Controller: Yes
Allin1DC CNC Controller: Yes
Oak CNC controller: No
CNC Control System Serial Number: none
DC3IOB: No
CNC12: Yes
CNC11: Yes
CPU10 or CPU7: Yes
Location: Mesa, AZ

Re: Bridgeport Interact 1 mk2 retrofit

Post by martyscncgarage »

I have had reasonable luck with DMM DYN4 and their motors when properly sized and implemented. So have many others.

Please post pictures of your machine including your control cabinet and what you have now. I see no reason why you can't use the DMM DYN4s and simply remove the Mesa control hardware and replace it with Centroid Acorn.

The DYN4 drives use a +5VDC logic signal for Step and Direction.
See the attached schematic for reference.
Some have also wired step and direction directly to the DB25 using a breakout board for the step and direction signals. Enable still has to come from the Acorn Header



Marty
Attachments
S14969-ACORN_rev4_DMM_DYN4.pdf
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Mesa, AZ
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