Re: Bridgeport conversion

I have been collecting data on this exact question for a long time as
i want to do a bridgport stepper conversion. You will see many posts
from people who tried and gave up because they always lost steps.
However there are more posts recently from people who have had
successful conversions (these posts have mostly been on the yahoo
gecko group). The difference is the newer gecko drives with the nema
42 jumper.

A gecko still cannot drive a nema 42 to full power, but from reports
it will work slightly better than the old bridgport drive in IPM.

If you try to do this conversion then run the full 80VDC to the gecko
drive.



Wally

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "rszemeti" <list@r...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have a bridgeport Interact series 1 CNC mill, with steppers, that
I
> want to convert form its ancient "boss 5" cnc control, to something
newer.
>
> The question is, should I keep the old stepper drives, or fit
geckos?
> The drives on the older bridgeports take "phase" rather than step
and
> direction input, which thankfully EMC is quite capable of providing
> ... so no problems there. The only issue is are Geckos up to the job
> (thes motors draw 7.5 amps, thats 3.75A per winding as they are
always
> driven "two-coil" fullstep with a bipolar drive.
>
> Should I stick with the old drives or will geckos give me a
> performance increase?? The old drives certainly powered the steppers
> before, but with their "saturable inductors" .. I wonder how much
> improvement I'll see with a modern drive? The motors are 8 lead, so
it
> should be possible to wire them up to work nicely on a gecko ...
>
> This must have been doen before .. whats the score??