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Help with bridgeport X & Y powerfeeds not working

M K

Cast Iron
Joined
Feb 7, 2018
Hi

My names Marc and I live in the uk & I am new to this site but have been reading a few threads here and there for info and just general reading about other people’s projects

I just bought an Adcock Shipley bridgeport which is in need of some tlc but it was picked up from a friends friends yard where it had sat outside for 6 months for just £300 so I bought it without seeing it as I thought it was worth a punt and like reviving good old Machinary

Anyway I got it in a fairly sorry state as fully expected and have so far been very surprised how good it seems to be underneath

I have stripped the head and spindle and have already ordered rebuild kits from H&W machinary repairs in the states who I see are users on this site?

I have tested all electrics and everything works as it should except the power feeds

They are both original Bridgeport X & Y feeds,

The X feed motor was badly bent I’m guessing during transport long ago and it won’t spin properly as it jams due to a bent shaft but it does try to spin so I know it’s not a dead motor

The Y feed motor when bench tested on its own does run fine when connected on its own direct to 110v

But although my boards and contactors etc seem good I can not get anything working when wired up but the wiring could well be wrong as it’s been crimped here and there blatantly

It has the Quinton Crane board and the erskine changeover relay duel long/cross board

Just to start I am trying to soley get the Y feed working as I know this motor runs fine,

I have tested the 50k potentiometer which seems fine, the rapid traverse switch tests ok as does the forwards/reverse switches

What I’m not sure of is how it all wired up?

I can follow the diagram I have but it doesn’t show clear enough for me how to wire into the forward and reverse switches?

Is there a way to bypass the duel feed changeover board to just attempt to get the Y power feed working through the Quinton Crane control board just to eliminate the duel feed board

I am not sure how to add pictures? But will post some photos as soon as I know how

Many thanks
Marc
 
Marc,
Welcome aboard! You have some work ahead of you.

There are several that should be able to heplf you with the feeds. The serial number (age of machine) will help. A Y feed is farely rare. Something like 1% of the mills shipped had both feeds.
Good Luck,
JR
 
Another option is if anybody knows of a new style dc motor controller I can use the run the original motors that will get rid of the erskine and Quinton boards etc but still allow the use of forward/reverse potentiometer and rapid traverse button

I will replace all wires anyway as there old and either brittle in places or oily and dirty so no hardship to wire a new board but no idea which one I could retro fit that will allow me to keep the original looks

Minarik look good but there is so many variants

Thanks
Marc
 
Jon at H&W, who posts here often as HWElecRepair, is about to become your best friend - he specializes in the power feeds. If he doesn't pick up this post soon, you might try a PM (private message) to him.
 
Thanks for the replies guys,

Yes I know I have some work ahead JR but it’s not actually that bad, or not as bad as I expected

I’m looking forward to stripping it down more etc

I just need to see if I can salvage the feeds, I’d like to as it looks more original but if not il fit so Align power feeds maybe and eBay the whole job lot to try and help with new ones

Hopefully Jon will see this post and reply

thanks
Marc
 
You can spend a lot of money on the BP feeds before you come close to even a Chinese feed. The Erksine boards are rebuildable. If your motors are good, that's half the battle. There are several guys here that know their shit. They must be resting at the moment. :D
JR
 
The X axis motor was damaged before I got the machine! It had been bent badly so I straightened the shaft but all the armature etc is offset on the shaft and it won’t spin , just jams 3/4 of the way around

But if everything was to end up being ok then il hunt for another motor

The X axis motor has 5 wires (4 plus earth) and the Y axis only has 4 (no earth?)

2 new Align power feeds will set me back approx £900 as although the X is simple for the Y axis I need to replace the housing assembly for a non power feed type before I can fit an Align type and the I need a new leadscrew or an adapter as well

Thanks
Marc
 
I faced the same problem with my BP (only the x feed though) and my conclusions were as follows
a) The parts from Hardinge in the UK were eyewateringly expensive.
b) It is an awful lot of work to overhaul the feeds - and ultimately they are not very good
c) The ersikne board is a very fragile piece of equipment and lets out its smoke at the first opportunity and I could not find anyone prepared to look at it.

I went and bought an align feed for £280 - there is a gentleman in Milton Keynes who will sell you the table screw extension for about £60 (or you can make it yourself) and so for around £350 your x axis is sorted
 
Jon at H&W, who posts here often as HWElecRepair, is about to become your best friend - he specializes in the power feeds. If he doesn't pick up this post soon, you might try a PM (private message) to him.

I only get on the site in the morning while drinking my freedom and getting ready for the day... but thanks for the plug buddy...
 
Alright, here is my thoughts on this...

Personally, I agree with JR... the Bridgeport power feeds are beasts. Expensive as crap to fix, but more of a workhorse. But you need to make the decision on how to go about it based on what you want out of it. If you are gonna be pulling a huge boat, do you use a Chevy S10 or a Ford F350 super duty? But if you are only hauling yard scraps to the dump, do you need the F350? (and yes, thats one of my go to lines. Its either that or a hunting analogy lol)

Now as far as getting yours going... I am not a big fan of the simultaneous controlled circuit boards. I much prefer each drive having their own card and wiring and such. More expensive, but better IMHO. Mostly because of this, if the board goes down both are screwed. I wonder if I can post a PDF of the wiring that I have... the wiring diagrams I have are for the 6F/8F and not sure if the UK versions are much different. Ok they wont lemme load. Lemme try and fix that later.

As far as the 4 or 5 wire versions, you are right. On the 4 wire version, there is no ground. White and green go to the switches, black to the rapid switch, red to the board. On the 5 wire version, green is ground and the brown goes to the reversing switches.

You can get two of the original 6F castings (I know a guy who has like 15 of them lol) and then get the 038-0217 to go from there. I would have to look and see if I have any of the connectors for the wiring, but you will have to do some splicing and soldering to get all the wiring done. Obviously you dont gotta buy from me, id prefer, but ill still help even if ya dont, since you are across the pond :P If you get the castings and mount them onto the side of the mill, you will be able to use both power feeds independently of each other.

You can get new armatures for your motors... going off of you saying its bent. Personally I have never seen an armature get bent. Normally its the bearings that crap out and cause issues like that. But if its visibly bent, then ya :D

Jon
H&W Machine Repair
 
I've looked, but I can't find the drive comparison that somebody die. BP 8F vs Servo, vs import. The 8F was over 200 in/lb of torque vs 150 for Servo and 125 for imports. That's if I'm remmembering correctly I'm old you know.

Many people have replaced the drive boards on their 6F drives with Minarik. Minarik Drives
That way you can have a board for each drive.

Motors are always on ebay.
JR
 
"Motors are always on ebay. "
JR

Currently on ebay there is one motor on ebay in the US and none on ebay UK - In the UK these motors are the proverbial rocking horse droppings.
By the time the OP has paid the USD300 for the item, paid another say USD 200 shipping , paid import duty , paid Value added Tax and a handling charge it will be close on $750 JUST for the motor.
This is ridiculously expensive.
By the time he has bought a new control board and any other spares he is going to be in the hole for a serious sum of money - and frankly unnecessarily.

But as usual since we live in a democracy we can all have our own opinion.
 
Marc

There are circuit diagrams for the UK style power feed connections and changeover relay board in the files section of the Yahoo Bridgeport group. Yahoo! Groups Do the "I want to join thing" and I'll get you signed on so you can see them. Allegedly the changeover board can have problems. Probably best to hook up new micro-swithes and test carefully verifying that all the relays do what they should as you go.

Whilst you have it apart replace the clutch arm return springs. Action gets poor when they get old and with a dual feed set-up you really want a good positive snap back to neutral.

Actual connections are the same for both Erskine and Quinton Crane boards, they are functionally interchangeable. Probably the easiest way to verify that the board is OK would be to do a simple direct connection to your known good motor. Unfortunately we only have circuit diagrams for a typical Erskine board but the Quinton Crane board is sufficiently similar on the output side is for the basic function checks to work. If it is board trouble I got a Quinton Crane board fixed about 2 or 3 years back for £ 100 by Quinton Crane themselves. I can dig out the address if you need it.

New motors can be got from Sorted Machine Sales :- ITEM �27 - �38-�383 Power Feed Motor New F-6�91 but they aren't cheap! Its basically a common industrial DC motor, only the worm drive on the spindle makes it a bit different. On a UK machine it could well be a Fracmo motor so parts may be a possibility as the firm is still trading.

If you do decide to swop for an import system don't forget that you need an adaptor shaft to fit the drive unit to the power-feed leadscrews. Something many suppliers fail to mention. Given the relative rarity of the Y-Axis power feed I'm unsure as to whether you can actually buy the parts needed off the shelf or whether you have to get a normal, non power feed screw and mount to replace yours. Add up the costs carefully. New motor may be expensive but I'd be unsurprised to discover that changing comes out even more although you should be able to recoup some money by selling the surplus, good parts off yours.

Amazed that the motor shaft managed to get bent without destroying the main drive casing and contents. I know of one Bridgeport that fell off a pallet truck onto the X drive end. Heck of a bang when it went down, was about 20 yards away and nearly jumped out of my skin, but allegedly all still functional afterwards. Far as I know no one confessed to management or the dealers who bought it!

General experience is that the standard UK drives are robust often lasting 30 or 40 years without problems. Being discrete components they are generally repairable if need be. Weakest points are probably electrolytic capacitors which, like all such, can fail due to simple old age and the pulse transformer in the output control. Unfortunately the pulse transformer usually takes out the output thyristors when it goes.

Clive
 
Hi everyone

Thanks for all the reply's and the private message Jon

ok so to start, the X axis feed motor must of been bent during previous moving, i have bent it back so the shaft is now straight but the part wrapped around the shaft with all the metal strips on is now eccentric on the shaft so that hits the magnets in the case jamming it up,

here's a couple of photos

IMG_8701.jpg

IMG_8748.jpg

IMG_8766.jpg

IMG_8767.jpg

Im not sure how to attempt to re align the armature on the shaft without bending it up etc but as its screwed currently anyway i have nothing to lose by whacking it around a bit on the lathe between centres and trying
 
Captain Obvious time. Have you verified that the field coils & armatures didn't get shifted during that rather spectacular bend. I've encountered dynamos and DC motors with slightly displaced field coils resulting in contact. Maybe there is enough wiggle room to cope with the eccentricity.

Talk to Fracmo before you do anything potentially irreversible. Maybe they can supply a new armature for less than the price of a new motor or Align drive or even rebuild yours. Found out the hard way with other things that sometimes going direct to the OEM is more economical than work arounds!

Clive
 
As you have mentioned i am aware that to swap over to an after market power feed i need extensions on both X and Y leadscrews as mine are shorter than needed due to being fitted with power feeds from the factory so before i decide which way to go id like to work out if the boards actually work which is mainly where i need peoples help

I have totally disconnected the X axis wiring for now as the motor is damaged anyway so il try that afterwards and can test it using the Y axis motor seeing as the only difference is the earth lead and im testing it all laid out on the floor anyway

So here is some pics of my wiring and wire colours

The forward/reverse switch has 6 leads (3 for each switch) which all test ok and are as follows on each switch
IMG_8911.jpg
Common
Normally open
Normally closed

The potentiometer has 2 connectors and when resistance is checked it ranges from zero to 49k ohms so all ok
IMG_8916.jpg
Rapid traverse switch is Normally open and closes circuit when pressed as it should

The motor is a 4 wire motor
IMG_8910.jpg
there is 3 brown wires and 1 green/yellow so looks to of been re wired with random 4 core at some point, when i bench tested it i found the 2 coil wires and 2 comutator wires and joined 1 of each so i had 2 pairs and connected them directly to 110v at the motor runs fine in both directions so that's ok

the wires from the erskine board can be seen here
IMG_8919.jpg

They correspond to the input onto the dual feed board seen here
IMG_8917.jpg

i can only add 5 pictures per post so will continue this below
 
So these are the wires i have to connect to the motor, forward/reverse switch/rapid traverse

IMG_8909.jpg

The wires i have coming from the main 110v contactor in the cabinet are red and brown and also yellow and green as seen here

IMG_8920.jpg


I have seen some wiring diagrams available but can anybody do me some instructions to test the motor using all the switches etc exactly as if it were wired up and fitted properly

I think i read somewhere that if there is only one axis power feed you can run direct to the Quinton Crane board and bypass the erskine dual feed board altogether but not sure if that is true?




Clive603 - I have already tried to join the bridgeport yahoo group and even emailed the page owner direct around 4-5 days ago but my membership request has still not been approved so i guess i just have to wait?

Thanks for all the help and replay, really appreciated, i will add some random pictures of the mill as i have already cleaned it up a bit :)
 








 
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