Small lathe conversion

Well that all is a lot to consider. Every CNC I have ever used was a servo system, but we are talking machine shop (slant bed lathe and machine center stuff) not home. I bought this small lathe to make parts for hotrods and hobby toys with the occasional paying job mixed in. I do not have a lot of space or I would have bought a full size machine not table top. That said I have already been asked about making parts for people. I am new to building CNC machines but not running them. I like the closed loop stepper drives you posted Andy, that is the direction I think I would like to go, was really looking at servos because of my own experience. I will probably only go that direction if it will work with a small form factor pc and some motion card. I looked at the leadshine ebay link, the only reservations I have with something like that is the power of the stepper in the nema 23 range listed 283 oz/in. I will do some research in that direction and other offerings. Any other advice is welcome. Thank you all for the help.

Thank you for that Andy. Well I did a little looking around and found a few things and was wondering if they would work with the linuxcnc. Found this americanmotiontech.com/motor-drive-sets/...otor-drive-set-80vdc. Google told me nema 23 and 24 are the same bolt pattern, and they seem to have more powerful servo. Then I found this which I like a lot cause it is silent and very powerful but not sure if a 7i76E mesa card would control it. www.teknic.com/model-info/CPM-SDSK-2321S-ELN/ I have seen this mentioned on this forum but they were used on a router table. After reading quite a few postings and serching the fourm the hardware I would like to run is as follows. A ZOTAC ZBOX C Series Passive Cooling Mini PC --> 7i76E --> closed loop stepper/controler or clearpath sdsk servo/controler combo. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

I think either would do. You would have to add a stepper controller to the clearpath one.

Also note that NEMA 23 & 24 do not have the same dimensions so check the specs of your chosen drive before making any parts...

Hello Rod thank you for the reply. I looked again at the frame size and yep your right they are slightly diffrent by a few mm. As far as the clear path sdsk their website says "The ClearPath-SD models priced below combine a brushless, permanent magnet servo motor, encoder, and vector sinewave drive with a step and direction interface, all in one compact package." Their pdf just called for you to "tune" the servo, I didnt see that you had to use their drive thats why I asked if it would work with the mesa card. Ill do somemore reading on their site.

Thanks. I had a look at clearpath again as its been a while. I thought they needed a driver but they don't. Th6eey also say it can be driven by an Arduioo. If an Arduino can drive it, the 7i76e certainly can!

I think they have Window based tuning software so you may need a cable to tune them.

Thanks Rod for conferming. Well ill also need a windows pc to go with the cable...lol ill have to borrow one. Im going to read the whole pdf for those servos and see if they are for me. I do like how quiet and smooth they were in their video. I am going to start gathering parts soon. Thanks all for the input.

The JMC-motor.com IHHS57-36-20 2nm integrated closed loop stepper is only 283ozin, however it acts like a 425ozin open loop stepper, since you not having to have overhead in ozin to stop missed steps. At $114 vs clearpath's $257 it's worth playing around with a bit. They also have a tuner box that as soon as I get one I'll be reverse engineering to figure out a linux util for.

Cheers Robi