Thanks for the reply David. I have been keeping track of this thread, even though I still have not been able to get my hands on the machine yet. Hopefully sometime soon.

Karl

Dave I have two non functional lathes that I am in the process of trying to get the school to declare scrap so myself and another insrtructor can take them home and try retrofitting them. If we can get them to work under Mach3 control then we would attempt to get all the classroom machines changed o...

David Mine do not have programable spindle control. However the spindle RPM is read out on the display and it does cut threads accurately. Thus I imagine something like mach3 could control it. I've tried different values and if I program 28 passes it seems to cut 20 pretty repeatablly. Makes no senc...

Thanks
Got it

Karl

I tried to find the starturn software the Mr Magoo said to down load from the denford site, but I couldn't find it. Where do I find software for the Startturn that runs on todays faster computers?

Thanks

Karl

David Thanks for all the info on the starturn. I have 8 Starturn lathes in a CNC lab in a small comunity college and am trying to make them work. We are using Windows 98 computers to run the software in a dos window. They seem to work fairly well but today, when trying to run a thread chasing progra...

Cheers I'm going to check with my friend that figured it out and if it's OK with him I'll post the reply I got from him. The data is(as I remember it): 79 bytes for each line of startuen data byte 1 = line # Byte 2 = ? Byte 3 = 1 to indicate if the number in byte 4 is G, 2 if it is an M code Byte 4 ...

Hi Just a note to tell all those who tried to help, I now have a working ASCII editor that will read and write Starturn 4 encripted ".sta" files. A friend figured out the encription. It amounted to developing a "changing a 5 byte string to a floating point number" routine. Thanks again to all that o...

Hi again It does not appear to be storing step count. X0.0 produces 0 0 0 0 0 while X.005 produces 76 8D 97 6E 12 03 hex so I don't think it is step count. Another possibility I considered is since there are 6 digits of data and 6 bytes binary location used they might directly coorespond. But X111.1...

Wow, that is a wonderful idea. It never occured to me that the data could be step counts. I'll take a look tonight if I get a chance. I did discover something interesting this past weekend, though. If you use the "install" software to select your printer as "a file" then print the "program listing" ...

Thanks Dave but those schematics still didn't contain any data I need at this time. The progress I've made so far: The .sta files appear to contain 4 bytes of unknown data then groups of 78 bytes, one group for each Starturn line. The X dimension appears to be 6 bytes starting at the 38 byte into th...

Dave I'll be interested in how you do with the "new" starturn 4. I have a home built conversion of a Harbor Freight $320 mill to nc control using Mach3 software. I agree it would be better to strip the Starturn software and replace it with mach3. However I'm not sure the administration would approve...

Thanks Triac whizz for your effort. But, yes, Starturn 4's only save the user files in binary format. The simulator setting are stored in a separate ASCII (.sts) file. That I'm sure I could create. My guess is that the starturn 4 uses a single byte for each G & M code, and all floating point numbers...

No As much as I can determine, the Denford Editor is an ASCII editor and doesn't read or write the encripted .sta file required of the Starturn 4 machines.

Karl

I've attached an ACII text version of the same program. I typed it in, remembering what the .sta file looked like. So there may be some errors, but it is basically identical info. So "job2.txt" is the binary file I am trying to decode. "job2a.txt" is an ASCII file of the data contained in the "job2....

These are not standard ASCII. I wish they were! Attached is an example. I got on the internet last night and was exploring 4 byte storage of floating point variables. I think that may be the way numbers are stored. I have done a binary dump and can read the data, I just don't know how to interpert i...

I have 8 Starturn 4 lathes in a NC lab in a Community College. I would like to be able to have the students write their programs using an editor I wrote. Does anyone know the format of the encripted ".sta" files used by the starturn? I think I could change my editor to read and write this format if ...