My Denford Starturn

[davidimurray]

Hi Everyone

Thought I should add a couple of pics of my latest toy. It's a 1985 Denford Starturn originally controlled from a BBC. I stripped out the processor board and replaced it with a breakout board, digispeed and some boards I made to interface with the 12V stepper drivers. The orignal setup ran the 2.1A stepper motors at 1.8A for some reason so i have turned this up to 2A! It's performing very well so far - will easily take off 0.25mm at 550mm/min in brass and ali - haven't tried in anger on other materials! The monitor on the right has a touchscreen panel attached to the front as well (ebay bargain!) I've left the old stand on the monitor and stripped the plastics off - I will fold up a small tray which will then hold the keyboard.

The only physical difference you can see that the lathe has been modified is the extra switch and LEDs on the front panel for the digispeed. I've got to say this is on of the best tools I have ever had - I use it on a daily basis - much more than my CNC mill!

Cheers

Dave

[Graham Waterworth]

Nice one Dave,

what is the spindle controller in the lathe, my boxford has Lenze 534 type that I want to control with a DigiSpeed but it only has 0-10V + 0V no third connection so do I have to supply a ref voltage myself.

Graham.

[davidimurray]

Hi Graham

Mine's a Brown Pestell - the motor is a 1/2hp DC motor. I presume this for your 190VMC as I see you have a digispeed in there. I am lucky enough to have 3 connections on mine. On my mill I used an external plug pack to supply the +Ve - give Peter Homann a shout and he will tell you exactly how to do it. On my mill I had to supply 3.97V - this came from a 9V plugpack using the digispeeds onboard control voltage attenuator.

Cheers

Dave

[Graham Waterworth]

Thanks Dave, I will do that.

Graham.