Member postings for S Goldsmith

I know this is a little late but came across this thread while considering converting my Starmill and Starturn from EMC2 to localised firmware based solution employing cheap off the shelf compact 3d printer based cards such as Rambo (8 bit) and Duet (32 bit).

In my opinion the Denford Starturn along with the Starmill are cracking machines, i would argue they are built to higher quality than many of todays homeshop alternatives. The castings are of quality iron unlike many of the Chinese imported machines. ( I also own a 7x12 that has been a nightmare with rust corrosion)

I was lucky to pick up one of each some 10 years ago.
Initially it was a job to get them running under dos using their original 80's style driver boards, I pestered Denford almost every day for weeks for snippets of info as documentation was scarce, heck, soon after this a bunch of info and files appeared on their website, maybe they figured it would be better use of their time but eventually as I became more experienced I converted to EMC2 under RTLinux with modern stepper drivers.

There is no need to change the steppers unless found faulty.

Indeed the lathe conversion actually used the original Starturn controller board and power supply by hard wiring into the stepper drivers which in this case was of the L297 / L298 variant thus bypassing the controller board logic altogether and instead employing EMC2 along with a Messa 7i43 FPGA to provide smooth steps. The Starmill was even employed to produce the breakout board circuits which were milled / routed / drilled on the Starmill, bed levelling was employed to produce consistent depth for pcb tracks routes.

As for the Starturn tool changer which employs a motor attached to a ratchet system which rotates in one direction only, again this was controlled by EMC2 using Ladder Logic.

The Starturn is small but so are some parts indeed many model engineering parts lean to the smaller size of the scale. For larger work I employ a manual Boxford AUD lathe or a very old (1950's) Balding Beaver mill.

SRG

Muzzer,

This is excellent and just what I was looking for.

I have exactly the same issue that you had but with some bt / int30 tooling that has a mix of 10mm and 12mm drawbar thread, so I feel your pain with regards to tool changing. This incidentally is on an old Balding Beaver Model A milling machine circa 1950 - 60 at a guess. (http://www.lathes.co.uk/beaver/page2.html)

Certainly going to look into employing this method, great work!

SRG