Denford Software & Machines

I have a very nice (almost new) but old Starturn 4. As with most Denford kit the quality of mechanical bits is great and rather than upgrade electronics to Mach (not a fan) and as I have a spare Nextstep board and top card & Sprint 400 Spindle control I thought it a good idea to upgrade to this as I have seen pictures of upgrades done by Denford to this spec.

I have no problem with most of it so far, PC connects with card, Bypassed EStop and Guard, I can get steppers from Novamill to run, but am having a lot of problems getting any homing switches to work. I can not move much further until I get this bit sorted.
I have this testing with 2 steppers from a Novamill so that I am not confusing the board with steppers that may not work (see below)
I have added two std micro switches to the board connected to Home 0 and Home 1 and ground as per diagrams. I have tried with Vrmilling5 software (NovamillNS) and VRturn, MicroTurn 2000 and Novaturn NS but when I home the steppers and press the micro switched there is no affect at all.

Questions I have that may help me:
1. In my conversion which machine setting would I use in the end ie NovaturnNS, Microturn 2000NS of something else? (when denford did the upgrade what did they use)
2. Will the Steppers already in the Starturn 4 (8 wire bipolar wired in series to 4 wires) be OK to use with the Nexstep board ?

3. On the NovaTurn Lathe diagrams it shows these switches (Via relay) Open and when activated Closed (+5V drop to 0V). On MicroTurn diagrams it is opposite, as is the novamill (0V to +5V) Are they different depending on the type of switches used ie. Std Microswitches or Prox Sensors via a relay, I have tried both ways - what should it be?
4. Am I missing some other bypass that stops the Homing process working until activated?
5. In VrTurning is there a Magic Double Click to bypass the homing process as in VRMilling?

I hope that you can help

Questoin on Homing switches solved - read the diagram but got the connectors mixed up, now in the right holes and works. other questions still open for help.

Hi, wondered if you are still about? how far did you get with your conversion?

Pete

Hi Pete
Still here, sorted all the homing issues out, working og getting the Spindle encoder sorted.
JCS

Good stuff, I'm toying with the idea of upgrading the control of my Starturn 5 from DOS control to windows based control, I bought Quickturn 2d design to produce files knowing the threading cycle wouldn't work so have to swap valid G code in for threading to work with the DOS software. I would love to be able to use the VR CNC Turning so would need to source suitable control cards but had read at some point that the encoder for threading was an issue.

Pete