Micromill Plus

[daneast]

Hello. A local surplus has a Denford Micromill Plus for sale for $75 USD. I have no idea of the state of the electronics, or the motors, etc. It is sold "as-is". The machine looks to be in good condition all in all. It does not have any discs or software with it.

I have a few questions. I cannot find any references to a "Micromill Plus" anywhere at all. It says MICROMILL on the bottom face between the power button and the emergency stop button, and under that in script it says "Plus". Does anyone know what the "Plus" indicates? It has a power button and security key in the middle, and an emergency stop on the right. On the back right side there is a RS232 parallel port.

From what I have gathered from these forums, the mill may or may not work with DOS drivers / interface depending on the firmware. If it does not work with the DOS drivers then software would have to be purchased to make use of this machine. Is that correct?

Is it possible to test the machine in any way without hooking it up to a computer? If I were to plug it in and turn it on, is it supposed to do anything at all?

I see that there are many CNC controllers out there, like Smoothie. If I were to purchase this CNC, it would seem I could replace and modernize the controller for around $110 USD, thus I wouldn't need to try and get ahold of older drivers and hardware to interface RS-232. Anyone have any thoughts on doing that to revive an older machine?

There is an orange plug with a number of wires looping back into the plug. I'm not sure what that's for. Does that mean something has been removed from the controller board?

As far as hardware goes, are the stepper motors fairly standard and thus replaceable? Or is there not really any risk of them going bad.

Thanks for putting up with all my questions!

[daneast]

I've attached a picture of the Micromill Plus:

Photo Mar 20, 2 18 17 PM.jpg (268.51 KiB) Viewed 10402 times

[TDIPower]

It looks the same as the micromills I have in work (the oldest is just called a Micromill, the newer a Micromill 2000). Only Im on the other side of the pond. If you remove the back panel you will be able to show the control board, there will be a chip with about 1" by 0.5" and 28 legs. it should have a sticker on the top, this should be the software version. It is not soldered into the board but in a holder so it can be removed an upgraded.

If you can get those pics you may be able to find out more info. there are different types of control board and software and it is those that will dictate what you need to get it running.

As far as I know you do need a PC plugged in and software running to get the machine to move at all. I have a couple of old laptops with inbuilt RS232 ports running them as it is easier than the locked down student PCs

The machines I have in work are circa 2001, these were controlled by VR Milling V2.x running under windows 98 or XP, when we moved onto windows 7 we were able to upgrade to the current VR Milling V5.x as the EEproms in the machine had the right version of software installed on them.


Pete

[Martin]

We only ever made Micromills so I guess the agent added the sticker.

Can you post a picture of the electronics?

[daneast]

Firmware says:
denmint v2.0/S/
B19-JD5

So from what I've seen on the forum, it doesn't use the DOS drivers but the Windows drivers that cost a significant amount (or did at one point anyway).

[daneast]

Looking at other pictures of the Micromill circuit board, I see the mill I purchased (I went ahead and bought it) has an extra daughterboard that none of the other pictures show. It is attached via the big ribbon cable, and reads "C22 OPTIMISED CONTROL LTD. R21". I wonder what that is? I have a hunch it has to do with the "Plus" model. It has what I presume is a ROM chip labeled "D403-4 A2417"

[daneast]

To answer one of my own questions, that daughterboard is for spindle motor control.

[Martin]

You would need to speak to a local agent regarding the cost of VRMilling version 2 or 5.

Don't forget you will need a computer with a com port or a USB to Com port adapter.

[TDIPower]

Im pretty sure they still cost a fair amount of money BUT they work well with the machine. I ran V2 for years before upgrading to V5.

As I said in my post earlier, I currently run the machines of a couple of old Laptops as running them off the networked PC meant I had to go through the IT guys in work who have it all locked down. The laptops aren't high spec, just intel P4 1.6ghz machines with 512mb ram running XP with built in RS232 com port. So they would have been high spec at the time of the Micromill being 'new'.

Pete