Bridgeport CNC Mill???

I have a chance to buy a Bridgeport CNC Series 1 mill. The guy says he
thinks it has a bad control. I don't know anything about these. I just found
some PDF manuals on it. When I stopped and took a look at it, he had been
playing with it, punching buttons, and said he got the table to move back and
forth and the spindle to turn, but didn't know how he did it. It did light
up when I was there. So I'm thinking he doesn't know much more than me on
how to run it. He's not asking very much for it, about $700. Supposedly it
came out of a school, and he bought it off another guy, a few years ago, and
he wants the space back. I got a lot of reading to do on it, but I'm
thinking it maybe good, he jut don't know how to run it.

I'm just a Home hobby guy. I do want to make some Billet
snowmobile/ultralight heads with it.

What I'm wondering is, has anyone here upgraded one of these to run off
Mach3, with a PC?

I think it has stepper motors, not servos.

Does this have Ball Screws already since it's CNC already?

I was short on time when I got there, and I'm not sure if it has an RS232
port. Can you send G-Code to it from a PC?

What upgrades would you recommend for it, and approximate cost?

.001 is good enough for anything I will ever make. So I don't have to get
to high tech.

I know it's 3 phase. Last time I checked I couldn't get that at my house,
so I'm looking at using one of them VFD's.

Thanks for any info.

Rich Gillen
Ames, IA

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