# Bridgeport Boss Project



## sdmuleman (May 15, 2014)

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


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