Denford starturn 4 lathe

[wendy jacksonParticipant @wendyjackson]

[wendy jacksonParticipant @wendyjackson]

hi, I am looking for a small lathe just to do odd jobs, and I have heard of a Denford starturn 4 lathe.Apart from knowing that Denford made machines for schools I have know idea if they are any good or not. I want to machine small brass fittings. is it a good machine, as I don't really wish to buy Chinese. thanks

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

This is probably a good place for background information: **LINK**

http://www.denfordata.com/bb/viewforum.php?f=46

MichaelG.

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Terry

The Starturn was a small, and now seriously obsolete, CNC lathe made for educational use. Nominally 140 mm / 7 inch swing by 200 mm / 8" between centres. By the time you have a chuck on the realistic work envelope is pretty small. Especially if you want to drill holes.

Constructional standards are good, the hardware solid and its accurate. Biggest issue is software and drives. Standard software is limited and obsolete. BBC B and MSDos versions only I believe. Folk do convert them to Mach 3 and Linux and claim good results but its not a simple bolt on job unless you buy a complete turnkey kit. As ever technically savvy folk can do clever things cheaply but normal mortals find it takes longer and costs more.

Biggest issue with these small, obsolete, CNC machines is that the cost of modernising and upgrading is pretty much the same for all of them. So you get much more bang for your buck if you go for a larger machine like the like its big brother Orac.

Although the Starturn was an excellent teaching machine in its day odds are you will find it far too limiting for anything beyond the smallest work. That said I did briefly cross paths with a guy who got "several" for "£ almost nothing" and put them to work making stainless steel bits for the piercing community (yuk!). Allegedly he did quite well for a while then sailed too close to the wind tax wise with the usual results. So it may well be suitable for your small brass fittings.

Clive.

[wendy jacksonParticipant @wendyjackson]

thanks for your input. most of machines are older then I am, I have converted a few mills to cnc and its not as bad as some people make out.I know what you mean about small I have a very small emco and that's next to useless. I thick I will keep looking, I am in no hurry,

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Terry, if you want to use the lathe for very small parts the Starturn should suit your needs if it has original programming and working, or modernised with software, or you are prepared to fit new steppers with controllers and Linux or Mach to run it.

As a matter of interest which Emco lathe do you have ?

Emgee

[wendy jacksonParticipant @wendyjackson]

Hi, I have lots of cnc parts hanging around and have converted a few sieg mills and a roland engraver all to run on mach3 using usb ports and windows 10. I have the little unimat lathe

[S GoldsmithParticipant @sgoldsmith66584]

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 7×12 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

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