Bridgeport Questions

Thanks to Jon and Mr. Vicars (I didn't see your first name),

I am not any CNC genius, you probably guessed from my questions, so I
just assumed the mill would run under servos. It must be steppers as I've
been told by others that the mill will almost certainly not bring more than
£1000 (~$1500). I have spoken to the guy selling it who says it's in good
condition but grubby, seeing some of the used things described as 'grubby'
though makes me want to speak to him a bit more (Grubby read bust). I'll
call him soon.

I am 16 which means I don't work right now so the summer holidays was my
oppertunity to get some money for a mill. No matter how many places I called
no where seemed to want a 16 year old for some reason, I wonder. I really
want the mill for making turbine discs, compressor blades, parts for a
lathe, machines guns... I'm only kidding! The biggest problem I can see is
moving the mill home again. A transit van is one of those things you'll see
would-be do-it-all'ers with, the ones with sliding doors on the back.

The mill is 45 minutes driving away in Manchester and I can go up to
have a look the day before I've been told. I wish my sister had left her
camera here and I could have taken a few pictures. If the mill is using
steppers are they going to be microstepped or just put through a high belt
ratio for accuracy? I need it to be atleast as accurate as a Sherline
because the discs will be spinning real quickly and inaccuracies any bigger
will just vibrate them to a 100,000rpm violent death. How much is a rorary
table for a mill like this from Bridgeport? I've never seen them second hand
so I'd probably have to buy it new. I've seen other brands ranging between
$250 and $800 minus the stepper. My real concern my lack of everyday
expirience with running a mill so I don't know how much say, a patch of
rust, will do to accuracy. I know from reading books on scraping lathe beds
that small inconsistancies aren't much of a problem if the slide moving over
them is much larger.

I knew the Bridgeport S1 cnc had the control inside the box but I was a
little confused about it at first. If the mill is stepper driven, has it's
drivers and supply, then I just 'remove' the old, I forget it's name,
controller and add my own surplus 200mhz MMX in it's place. It has 32mb ram
and 2gb hard drive (Old is the word, it has a 16x cd drive and cost £2500
new!). The old control will have plugged into the drivers of coarse, do I
then do the same and terminate one end with a parrellel plug for the
computer in it's place? I am working on the idea there is some source of
information on which pins go to which bits. I have Corel Linux but I'm
hopeless at it right now, I'll have to stick RedHat on for EMC won't I? Or
will it run under Corel? I mean Corel as in, the idiot GUI level with
colourful backgrounds.

Thanks for your help again, I aprecitate it.

John