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Showing posts from August, 2009

Power Supply for CNC

One of the first things that one needs to retrofit a Bridgeport Boss CNC machine is a power supply for the steppers. That is assuming that one has drives which I do in the form of Geckodrive G201s. The original Bridgeport power supply for the steppers put out 56 volts dc so most people use this voltage although some use 60 or even higher voltages. As far as current goes most people use 6-7 amps, 7 amps being the maximum that G201s will source. While researching stepper power supplies I found a great reference on Gecko's website. http://www.geckodrive.com/upload/Step_motor_basics.pdf This document not only shows how to wire the drives but gives a good example of a power supply with sample component values. Basically a power supply (unregulated) only needs a transformer putting out a desired voltage that is rectified by a full diode bridge and filtered by a big capacitor. To get 56vac you need un-rectified 39vac. (56 v /1.414 = 39.6 v) For a capacitor value C = (80000 u