Bridgeport Rehab - or How To Lose Your Wife In 10 Days

jmiller said:
I ordered a bit of 24 sheilded cat6
Click to expand...
That'll work. Surprised you have to buy any, though, unless you're way better than me at throwing stuff out. I've got so many old cable modems, routers, and piles of ethernet cable laying about it's ridiculous. You might still want to run conduit (flex or otherwise) to the box anyway, so the shielding and outer wrap may be overkill.

For what it's worth, I've had good experience with hook-up wire kits from Remington Industries. If you expect to do any more low-voltage control wiring at all, it's handy to have a kit or two like these on hand (along with a decent wire stripper, ring and lug terminator collection, crimper, USB soldering iron, yaddah yaddah -- moar tooooolllsss!).

I tend to prefer PTFE (stiff) coating vs. silicone (floppy) coating for control wiring, but it's mostly a matter of preference. You do need better wire strippers with PTFE.

I'm also a fan of old school (and I mean OLD school) wax cord cable lacing to make wiring harnesses. Keeps things tidy, cheap as dirt, simple to learn, useful for harnesses with any number of crazy branches, and kinda retro looking. Plastic cable ties look cheap to me, and the stick-on mounts never seem to stay where they are supposed to.
 
Rex Walters said:
That'll work. Surprised you have to buy any, though, unless you're way better than me at throwing stuff out. I've got so many old cable modems, routers, and piles of ethernet cable laying about it's ridiculous. You might still want to run conduit (flex or otherwise) to the box anyway, so the shielding and outer wrap may be overkill.

For what it's worth, I've had good experience with hook-up wire kits from Remington Industries. If you expect to do any more low-voltage control wiring at all, it's handy to have a kit or two like these on hand (along with a decent wire stripper, ring and lug terminator collection, crimper, USB soldering iron, yaddah yaddah -- moar tooooolllsss!).

I tend to prefer PTFE (stiff) coating vs. silicone (floppy) coating for control wiring, but it's mostly a matter of preference. You do need better wire strippers with PTFE.

I'm also a fan of old school (and I mean OLD school) wax cord cable lacing to make wiring harnesses. Keeps things tidy, cheap as dirt, simple to learn, useful for harnesses with any number of crazy branches, and kinda retro looking. Plastic cable ties look cheap to me, and the stick-on mounts never seem to stay where they are supposed to.
Click to expand...
Great advice, thank you!

I dug through my box of old cables and just couldn't find anything with shielding. I didn't think about the fact that metal conduit would probably provide the same protection. I ordered a 10 color hookup kit in 20g. Should be easier to work with the larger wires.
 
What works very well and is very cheap...

Modem cables.

DB9 connector with pre-made ends are water tight.

You just need to mount the connectors to your box and do internal wiring.

Then plug and play.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk
 
tq60 said:
What works very well and is very cheap...

Modem cables.

DB9 connector with pre-made ends are water tight.

You just need to mount the connectors to your box and do internal wiring.

Then plug and play.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Lol, i was looking at db9 cables and thinking about cutting the ends off. Didnt consider using it as intended.
 
FYI, I do quite a few VFD installs and would not use Ethernet cables, nor run the wires in conduit unless they needed to be protected. The usually recommendations for control wiring is 18-22AWG shielded cable with stranded, not solid wires. I use ferrules at the VFD end, crimps at the switch end. Shield grounding for control wires should only be at the VFD end, the other end I use shrink wrap to insulate the shield. Motor cables of shielded cable, are grounded at both ends. I often use Automation Direct for wire and parts, and a number of other vendors. You can buy a ferrule kit. on crimps I use USA nylon insulated types and get a decent crimper.

Control wire
Quabbin control and signal cable, shielded, 3 conductors, 22 AWG, 7-stranded, tinned copper, PVC conductor insulation material

Quabbin control and signal cable, shielded, 6 conductors, 22 AWG, 7-stranded, tinned copper, PVC conductor insulation material

Quabbin control and signal cable, shielded, 8 conductors, 22 AWG, 7-stranded, tinned copper, PVC conductor insulation material

Quabbin control and signal cable, shielded, 12 conductors, 22 AWG, 7-stranded, tinned copper, PVC conductor insulation material

Motor wire
Southwire flexible multi-conductor control cable, 4 conductors (includes ground), 14 AWG, PVC/Nylon conductor insulation material, black with white numbers and green/yellow ground, shielded, TPE jacket, gray, cut to length

A bit more complicated build, but shows the cabling terminations.
Acra 1660TE Lathe Control System 3.jpg
Acra 1660TE Lathe Control System 1.jpg
 
I finally got the head mostly stepped cleaned and put back together. I did not take the quill apart, or any of the gear trains, didn't see a need at this point. I did get all the functions working. Back gears and auto feed as well as auto stop are working properly now. I am having one issue with the quill stop. When it trips it does so very slowly and stops short of fully disengaging without any "snap" to it the way that it would snap open if I manually dissengage it. It does just barely release the down feed gears in this position and I can manually move the quill quite easily but I do feel the slightest hint of rubbing unless I fully trip the feed lever by hand. Im guessing maybe the spring and pin that pushes the clutch arm are possibly worn out? I didnt take the quill feed switch assembly apart all the way, i did soak it wd40 and blasted it out with compressed air. But again the action feels fine by hand.

Also while in auto feed I can easily overpower the main quill feed arm with a single finger. I remeber watching a video on how to solve that problem, i will try to find it again. Getting very close to my first chips on this bad boy.
 
Bridge port reassembly is complete. I put the old DRO back on and it seems to be accurate and repeatable as verified by my dial indicator. I trammed the tilt to within .001 over 15" and got the nod to maybe a tenth or two over the width of the table. My indicator only goes to one thousandths. I just used my mag base noga arm stuck to the underside of the spindle nose and rolled a gauge pin under the needle every time I rotated the spindle. Slowly tightened the bolts and adjusted until they were as tight as I could reasonably get them with a wrench. Measurements were repeatable in all directions. I can swing the arm around and be within .0025-.0005 anywhere on the table. Hopefully there isn't a flaw in my set up.

I tramed the vise in to a few 10ths as well. Unfortunately i dont have any vice jaws at the moment. Suppose I could make some as my first project.

All that really left is to finish the VFD control wiring.


And for those of you keeping track, the wife is still here... somewhere. I should probably go see what kind of trouble she's gotten herself into.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top