Ran across a guy a few miles away from me with 3 BP Boss series CNC machines all apparently removed from a small shop several years ago. He got them intending to convert at least one to modern cnc operation but hasn't gotten around too it yet so he's selling 2 of the machines. Supposedly they were in 'very good' condition when removed but have been stored outdoors partially covered for several years. All 3 are stepper motor units with tape readers, and all 3 have the conventional series 1 ram head, not the rigid ram. 2 of the 3 have air speed adjust & brake systems.
My tentative plan is to get both, convert both to modern computer systems, sell 1 and hopefully cover my costs on the other. Got a few questions...
1) What does the head/ram assembly weight and how much of a pain is it to remove from the base assembly? My tractor can lift ~2000 lb, and from what I've seen these are ~3000 machines. My thought was to remove the head/ram assembly since it looks like it's just 4 bolts and hopefully the remaining base unit would be light enough to lift off. I'm concerned about messing up alignment though - not worth making a whole bunch of extra work for myself.
2) Can the air speed control be easily converted back to manual? Is there really much benifit to having it? Not planning to mess with it if it works, but if it doesn't I don't want to get stuck into a whole bunch of work to fix it if I can just get rid of it.
4) It seems like the most common conversion is Gekcos but I also saw some info on a KL-11080 driver - any reason not use these? The price looks pretty close to the Geckos and I like the fact that these have a built in power supply - no messing around with a separate power supply.
5) What is a reasonable sale price for a converted boss unit setup with a computer but without any tooling? Assuming that the base machine is in good shape and everything works. I'm looking for the 'what would you pay' price, not what top dollar might be for it. I know it's subjective, but I'd like to have at least some idea what a reasonable value is for these machines so I can decide if I can make this work or not.
6) Anyone have manuals / wiring diagrams for these?
7) This unit has the auto oiler - one thing I've read is that the ports on these will gum up with age, but how hard is it to get to all of them for cleaning?
Thanks,
~John
My tentative plan is to get both, convert both to modern computer systems, sell 1 and hopefully cover my costs on the other. Got a few questions...
1) What does the head/ram assembly weight and how much of a pain is it to remove from the base assembly? My tractor can lift ~2000 lb, and from what I've seen these are ~3000 machines. My thought was to remove the head/ram assembly since it looks like it's just 4 bolts and hopefully the remaining base unit would be light enough to lift off. I'm concerned about messing up alignment though - not worth making a whole bunch of extra work for myself.
2) Can the air speed control be easily converted back to manual? Is there really much benifit to having it? Not planning to mess with it if it works, but if it doesn't I don't want to get stuck into a whole bunch of work to fix it if I can just get rid of it.
4) It seems like the most common conversion is Gekcos but I also saw some info on a KL-11080 driver - any reason not use these? The price looks pretty close to the Geckos and I like the fact that these have a built in power supply - no messing around with a separate power supply.
5) What is a reasonable sale price for a converted boss unit setup with a computer but without any tooling? Assuming that the base machine is in good shape and everything works. I'm looking for the 'what would you pay' price, not what top dollar might be for it. I know it's subjective, but I'd like to have at least some idea what a reasonable value is for these machines so I can decide if I can make this work or not.
6) Anyone have manuals / wiring diagrams for these?
7) This unit has the auto oiler - one thing I've read is that the ports on these will gum up with age, but how hard is it to get to all of them for cleaning?
Thanks,
~John