Learned an interesting and handy new term the other day, kind of the opposite of unobtainium..

[Fumesucker]

7. Here's my most ambitious scrapbinium project..

This is a Bridgeport computer controlled milling machine that was made in 1982, the original computer system was the size of a refrigerator and the magic smoke had long since left the building, electronically speaking it was pining for the fjords but the mechanical parts were still in pretty decent shape although it was stone ugly after decades of cutting metal. I got the machine off Craigslist for the price it would have fetched at the scrap metal yard, then after I disassembled, cleaned, sanded, repainted and reassembled the entire machine I retrofitted new control electronics and motors and a PC with custom software and a touch screen monitor to run it. You can see the PC up top and the control electronics are in the box behind the PC.

Basically this thing was a battleship anchor, now it works better than it did when it was brand new. It took me nearly a year to get the machine to this point, it's an effort about equivalent to a ground up restoration on a vintage car.

Oh, and other than the PC and the touch screen monitor I got off Craigslist the new control electronics were all made in the USA, the custom software running on the PC is also from the USA.



Here's what it looked like when I got it..