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  • Several Regions have held meetups already, but others are being planned or are evaluating the interest. The Ontario GTA West area meetup is planned for Saturday April 26th at Greasemonkeys shop in Aylmer Ontario. If you are interested and haven’t signed up yet, click here! Arbutus has also explored interest in a Fraser Valley meetup but it seems members either missed his thread or had other plans. Let him know if you are interested in a meetup later in the year by posting here! Slowpoke is trying to pull together an Ottawa area meetup later this summer. No date has been selected yet, so let him know if you are interested here! We are not aware of any other meetups being planned this year. If you are interested in doing something in your area, let everyone know and make it happen! Meetups are a great way to make new machining friends and get hands on help in your area. Don’t be shy, sign up and come, or plan your own meetup!

Another hobby machining guy in Central Alberta

C

Chipper5783

Super User
I got started into machining in the early '80s. I thought it would be somewhat of a career thing, to compliment my other trade, but that isn't the way things went. I ended up with a whole lot more formal education, but have kept that first lathe and enjoyed machining as a hobby. At times it seemed like I was hauling a boat anchor around the country, having moved 3 times over the years.

Sometimes the lathe would sit idle for a few years, but I never gave up on the interest in making stuff. About 6 years ago I added a work shop onto the garage - and ramped up the machine & tooling acquisitions. I troll through the usual used machinery opportunities; Kijiji, auctions, word of mouth. Other than that first lathe, everything else has needed a fair amont of attention - strictly speaking, that is my hobby, fixing up the old machine tools I've dragged home. As the saying goes, "rarely does anything ever leave the building".

There is getting to be a small fleet, but is still keep looking for more machines that I could fix up. Even though I have two projects in progress: the surface grinder and the VMC. The VMC will drive an upgrade to the 3 phase system (probably cost more than what the VMC did). I suspect most everyone else here also has an endless project list- but that is no barrier to adding onto it.

Anyway, good to see that there are a few other hobbyists in the area. I'd be interested in hearing from any in the cnc community that are familiar with BP's DX-32.

Regards, David
 
Welcome aboard David. Nice to hear you've been building a great shop. What's a BP DX-32? I have a home brew CNC Mill. Some other guys on here have various sizes of CNC gear and various types from small to full size Haas.
 
The BP is a Bridgeport VMC-1000/22. It is a pretty standard full feature industrial machine of late 1990's vintage: 1000mm of X travel, 15 hp spindle, 20 tool changer, chip conveyor, flood coolant and full cabinet. It is not all that large a machine, but with the enclosure it takes up quite a bit of floor space. I saw it run a few times, but I have not sorted the power just yet. This one has Bridgeport's DX-32 controller which is basically another G code, with some minor syntax differences (compared to the G code associated with other controllers). I understand they were also offered with a Heidenhein.
 
@Chipper5783 David are you in the Calgary area? I'd like to see your mill sometime... I looked it up and it looks like a good machine to me.
 
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