Bridgeport CNC mill troubleshooting

Hey, thanks for reading I'm new on the board and I'm having issues with a Bridgeport mill my job recently bought and I'm now responsible for.

Here's the specs:

1. machine manufacturer and type - Bridgeport CNC Mill
2. year of manufacture - 1984
3. machine model - bridgeport CNC mill series II r2e3 Boss 8

The Problem: Cannot move the XY or Z axis in Jog function with standard JOG, JOG KNB, or JOG INT.

I got it to work once but since then it hasn't cooperated, that only occurred after the dead or low battery warning light expired, i shut it down thinking it was good to go. I start it today and JOG doesn't work again. It does move, it goes to its home position on startup, but I have no manual JOG control.

If it helps I don't have the Air hooked up yet either as I wasn't attempting to mill rather just making sure everything functions, the PC is also not hooked up yet.

Thanks in advance for any assistance, I'm a noob at this but have been reading through the manuals and am excited to put it to work. If I can get over this hump that is.

I sure hope it was cheap. Good luck, your gonna need it! That control was junk 33 years ago and probably has not aged well. Did you change the battery before you shut it off? You will soon be on a first name basis with the people at EMI.... 100.00/hr for phone help. They take credit cards!

I used to have a couple of these piles of shit. I hope you have an electronics backround. You're going to need it.
First things first, though. Did you check the oil? Will it move in MDI or is it only JOG that's dead?

moonlight machine said:

I sure hope it was cheap. Good luck, your gonna need it! That control was junk 33 years ago and probably has not aged well. Did you change the battery before you shut it off? You will soon be on a first name basis with the people at EMI.... 100.00/hr for phone help. They take credit cards!

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That is disappointing to hear. No I did not change the battery, rather after letting it run for some time and then shutting it down It did not come back up when I turned it back on.

Can I get a link to EMI? I get a feeling that could be what's next unless someone has experienced this before and can enlighten me.

Larry Dickman said:

I used to have a couple of these piles of shit. I hope you have an electronics backround. You're going to need it.
First things first, though. Did you check the oil? Will it move in MDI or is it only JOG that's dead?

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It has Oil, have not moved it in MDI, Jog toggles between XYZ and different settings just fine but when it comes to actually moving on either Axis it doesn't respond to any settings method of command input and has even frozen a couple times.

E M I, Electro Mechanical Integrators 610 287 4240 I used to deal with them about 7 years ago. At the time the guy that designed that abortion, err. control worked there.

car2 said:

Can't be of any help here, but you might try posting on the (unmentionable) "Zone" forum. I have an Interact series 1 with a Heidenhain 2500 controller that works very well (for what it is), but that's totally different (10 years newer, modern servos, etc). The mechanical parts on the old bridgeport cnc's are good (for a knee-mill cnc), but that controller is ancient and I never heard anything good about it over the years. Most people seem to get those and retrofit the controls (since the hardware is likely near new cause no one could/would run them). Good Luck, Cheers

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Problem with the z forum is those knuckleheads will want to put mach whatever on it, just what you need a control that is not as good as the pos you have. The only good thing is the iron is probably in good shape as that control has probably only worked about 30% of the time since new. If it is in good shape you could put a Centroid control on it. Better be sitting down when they tell you the price. You could buy an older VMC for not that much more. You probably want to ask here first before you buy anything.

I was "Lucky" enough to have had two of them. When one would go down, which was a weekly occurrence, I would swap boards to try to isolate the problem. I would first start be checking voltages on all the boards. The power supplies in them are not much better built than a Jr High school kids science project.
Did you get a set of wiring diagrams with it? I would seriously look at a retrofit, even if you do get it working.