Teaching an old dog new tricks. Late 70’s era Boss5 with a Linux CNC retrofit.
What a beauty…
What is a Boss5? I see it but not sure what is.
The Boss5 is a Bridgeport milling machine that was CNC controlled from the factory and not a retrofit to a manual machine. These machines can not be operated manually, they do not have any hand cranks. These machines can be found with bad controller on the cheap and make a great base for a modern retrofit. These machines have nice ground ball screws on all three axii and are set up with limit/home switches and are driven with steppers or DC servos. This one is a stepper driven machine. I reused the original NEMA42 steppers and drive them with Gecko G203 drives. The control is Linux CNC with a MESA 5i25 FPGA card and a 7I76 breakout board.
So how’s it working? Chips flying?
Yes it is up and running, I have cut a few circular pockets in aluminum to test it out. I need to buy some more tool holders for it and want to set up a tool lenght touch off probe next as well as get the lube pump automated. I also want to add a spindle encoder for rigid tapping too, so far now it is usable but not done…