Retrofitting a 1985 BostoMatic BD55-2 with Numatix Control

Numatix · Oct 8, 2012

Hey All!
Just wanted to invite you to follow this thread as we retrofit a BostoMatic BD55-2 with our Numatix CNC Control. This machine has not worked for five years.

Here are before pictures of the machine:

Step 1: Removal of Old Control Components/Wiring

Admin5 · Oct 8, 2012

If you keep out the blatant free advertising and Facebook BS (which I edited out) you are welcome to post more on your progress here.

Laurentian · Oct 8, 2012

I think it's a '95. If it was an '85 it would be blue and be running SPC-II
If you want to sell the left over parts / control please PM me.
Thanks !

MattW · Oct 8, 2012

I did a rebuild on an '85 bosto. Owned by a school for a while, and I think I figured out why they got rid of it. Mice had eaten the insulation off of a bunch of wires in the panel. When I was working in one of the junction boxes on the top of the machine, I found insulation chewed off of a hot, a neutral, and whuddya know... a 5 year old, dried up dead mouse carcass. They were probably sick of intermittent squirrelly electrical problems.

Spent a year re-wiring, new servos, ditched the punch tape reader for Mach3 and it's a fine machine for a garage hack like me. Learned a heck of a lot in the process.

jdj · Oct 9, 2012

Every time I see "Bostomatic" or "Brother" machines, it cracks me up. I can't be the only one! Staplers and office equipment come to mind FIRST!

Laurentian · Oct 9, 2012

Mice seem to like Bosto's ! Not the first time I hear of mice going through a control or wiring in those.

metlmunchr · Oct 9, 2012

Did Mr Retrofitter's project stall when Don told him he couldn't spam here? Or maybe one of those mice bit him and he's recovering

DeanQ · Oct 9, 2012

Did Mr Retrofitter's project stall when Don told him he couldn't spam here? Or maybe one of those mice bit him and he's recovering

For crisake, it's only been a day!

Milacron · Oct 9, 2012

DeanQ said:
For crisake, it's only been a day!

True, but wouldn't surprise me in the least if we never hear another peep out of him. It's ok to "gently" advertise here by helping out with lots of good info. But if someone is so lazy that blatant advertising is all they want to do here under the illusion of "info" then that is no go. Numatix, prove me wrong...post some more.

ipmmiller · Oct 9, 2012

back when i worked on cars for a living it seemed as if half of all the engine misfires encountered were ignition wire related ......and half of those were directly caused by mice chewing on the wires.

Milacron · Oct 9, 2012

I wonder if mice will actually ingest petrochemical products and somehow get some nutrition from them ? I ask as I've seen mice chew thru all sorts of strange plastic and vinyl products over the years, which were all too soft to do any good for teeth maintenance, so why the heck did they chew the stuff ? Sometimes it's to get thru to something else but not always.

ipmmiller · Oct 9, 2012

Milacron said:
I wonder if mice will actually ingest petrochemical products and somehow get some nutrition from them ? I ask as I've seen mice chew thru all sorts of strange plastic and vinyl products over the years, which were all too soft to do any good for teeth maintenance, so why the heck did they chew the stuff ? Sometimes it's to get thru to something else but not always.

does make you wonder.....maybe its thier way of getting back at us?
My shop cat, who must have been an aztec warrior in a past life, likes to behead the little critters and leave thier
bodies at the front door as an offering......sometimes its just the heart, should call him to Montazuma.

Pete from TN · Oct 9, 2012

Interesting.... This should be pretty good. I have seen a little bit about the numatix system online and from what I gather it is pretty kick ass. I may have the name wrong but I have seen a couple videos of some Fadal Machines retrofitted with it and the performance is outstanding. Peace

Pete

Numatix · Oct 10, 2012

My mistake, you are absolutely right. It is a 1995.

Numatix · Oct 11, 2012

Sorry for the delay all...got a few nasty bites from, believe it or not, MICE...and if you don't get the bites treated right away, the infections can get nasty!

Anyway, day 1 is complete...removed all old control components, old cabling removed, new cabling ran, new CPU/electrical enclosure mounted on top of old one, new I/O mounted.

All that's left now is wiring all the scale feedback from the drives (machine also has encoders, but we are gonna try the scales first and see how it goes), along with some analog signals and, of course, all the I/O. Also need to mount the new Numatix control pendant and wire it up as well.

This machine is gonna have an IPG Laser integrated onto it, but that won't be delivered for a while, so it may be a while before it's completely wrapped up, but should be fun! Oh yeah, forgot to mention, no schematics found for the machine, so wiring should be a blast!

Pete from TN · Oct 11, 2012

Wow...

Boy that sucks man... Cannot imagine mice so aggressive they bite a person... DAMN that is crazy. If I were you I would HIGHLY recommend you wear a quality particulate mask to protect yourself from the mice droppings dust. They are nasty little bastards and there are a bunch of health hazards that go along with them. So apparently you are going to be using the original motors and drives for this setup? I am right now in a position that my Cincinatti Arrow 500 VMC is going to be needing a retrofit and I plan to replace basically everything in there. I am going to use a PC based control not sure exactly what just yet. Can you give us any details on the control you are installing? How much does it cost? What kinda performance do you get when it is finished? Thanks and peace

Pete

Numatix · Oct 15, 2012

Pete from TN said:
Boy that sucks man... Cannot imagine mice so aggressive they bite a person... DAMN that is crazy. If I were you I would HIGHLY recommend you wear a quality particulate mask to protect yourself from the mice droppings dust. They are nasty little bastards and there are a bunch of health hazards that go along with them. So apparently you are going to be using the original motors and drives for this setup? I am right now in a position that my Cincinatti Arrow 500 VMC is going to be needing a retrofit and I plan to replace basically everything in there. I am going to use a PC based control not sure exactly what just yet. Can you give us any details on the control you are installing? How much does it cost? What kinda performance do you get when it is finished? Thanks and peace

Pete

We are going to be using the original motors and drives (Siemens), but, when we do need to replace motors and drives we typically go with Yaskawa Sigma V series (been using Yaskawa on retrofits for about 14 years now...very reliable). We are also going to integrate the IPG laser onto the machine as well. The customer will mostly use the laser, but will occasionally use the spindle as well.
The control we are installing is the MAP-4 Numatix control. This model is specifically tailored for a 4-axis machine. This is a PC based control that, when it comes to performance and cycle times, cannot be beat. This will be the 6th Bostomatic we are retrofitting with a Numatix control at this customers site.
As far as performance goes - it used to take the customer approximately 40 hours to complete a certain Roller Die on one of their Bostos before the retrofit...after the retrofit, cycle time was cut down to 14 hours. This is on an intricate Roller Die with programmed feed rates between 5-10 ipm.

ewlsey · Oct 15, 2012

Why not just use the Delta Tau control? My understanding is that the Numatix or Numeryx or whatever they are calling it now is based on the Delta Tau processor card.

Anyone who thinks they can pull their old control off, and slap this thing on (without touching the servos or drives) and have killer die/mold machine is in for a rude awakening. The control is just one part of the motion control system.

Numatix · Oct 15, 2012

ewlsey said:
Why not just use the Delta Tau control? My understanding is that the Numatix or Numeryx or whatever they are calling it now is based on the Delta Tau processor card.

Anyone who thinks they can pull their old control off, and slap this thing on (without touching the servos or drives) and have killer die/mold machine is in for a rude awakening. The control is just one part of the motion control system.

The Numatix does use the Delta Tau Motion Card, but strictly as a servo control. The motion processing is done within the Numatix control and is separate from what the Delta Tau is tasked with doing. The Delta Tau processes data at a rate of 1,000-2,000 blocks per second...the Numatix is processing at a rate of 50,000 blocks per second.

And, yes, we are not touching the motors and drives on this application (like we didn't touch them on the previous Bostos or a majority of the other retrofits that have been completed) and the results are there.

There is a common misconception that we are making the machine go "faster" after retrofitting the machine with the Numatix. We are not making it go "faster", we are allowing the machine to cut efficiently by maintaining a cutting feed rate throughout the whole program that is closer to the programmed feedrate, thus the reduction in cycle time.

If we were to make the machine go "faster", then we would need to start looking at servos that could handle this kind of "faster" motion; but since we are not, replacing the servos is not necessary.

Numatix · Oct 20, 2012

Ready for some encoder signal wiring (X, Y, Z and A encoder signals, analog, spindle analog, and front panel/handwheel feed override signals) onto our 60-pin terminal blocks...should be fun!

Retrofitting a 1985 BostoMatic BD55-2 with Numatix Control

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