Matthew; if you want to see a small lathe – I did a Unimat SL lathe using LinuxCNC for control – there is a link **LINK** that will give you some of the info on it.

I did use a Gecko G540 for stepper motor control, which is a bit "over the top" but I had it, and it does work very well.

I do have an Emco Compact-8 to CNC-ize, one of these years!

Maybe the Unimat stuff in my link above will give you some food for thought.

John.

Hello Matthew,

i have converted my Super 7 to CNC, I can find and post you a link to some description I put up on the mycncuk forum. I also have some photos I can post here. I think the arguments for cnc-ing a lathe are quite strong, quite apart from mass production. For example, more versatile threading, faster threading, shapes like spheres and tapers and more general profiles without all the bother of special attachments, I've posted here about profiling gear cutters which is a doddle and much more versatile than the standard button method, and so on.

John.

John Haine – interesting link, thanks for that.

The guys at work (doing scientific prototypes) are an interesting bunch; two thoughts from talking to them:

1) They can't understand why we'd have a manual mill;

2) They do have manual lathes, but,

3) the CNC lathes have two hand wheels (MPGs) on the front, for manual operation. (the lathes are enclosed, of course, so MPGs are not on the aprons)

John Stewart.

Totally agree! I got rid of my game controllers because there is definitely something about twiddling a handle to mimic movement of an axis on one of our machines. Maybe decades of manual machining has re-mapped my brain, but using a game controller did not work well for me.

(Matthew – hope you are reading this – relevant to your original question)