Recycling Fanuc type robot for retrofit???

Just thought I'd toss this question out there and see if anyone had any ideas about it ---


I see a lot of old Fanuc 6 axis bots with controls relatively cheap out there

and i was wondering if it was a sound idea to buy one -

dismantle it and recycle motors/ drives/ power out of them

to retrofit a mill or a lathe


I have an old Wells Index i need to retrofit - left factory as nc tape machine

entered my garage as barely used with beautiful ways and ballscrews and motor mounts for 400 bucks

being the cheapskate that i am i came up with the idea of using a bot to outfit it with power

what do you guys think?


am i totally off base here???

has anyone ever interfaced EMC2 with fanuc robot drive components?

thank you in advance for any input

anyone have any ideas?
negative/positive i dont mind
just tossing it out there

im not really worried about monetary value of the thing once its done
i just want to have fun screwing around with it and trying to make it work

my original idea was to take the crap off a robot arm -
and apply them as motion power to the swivel/ nod /rotation of spindle head unit
and also to the rotation and in/ out travel of turret ram

then i had idea of mounting a number of arms to the base of the bridgeport
and using them to load tools and feed workpieces

then i got to thinking about how ive dismantled and moved it and the other machines
and how much fun it was
and the idea of setting the whole thing on some sort of spider leg or tracked setup
seemed ideal, as it could move itself around a shop and feed itself
or load itself onto a trailer

so anyways then i got the wells index and started looking for motors and drives
and the robot savagery idea came into play
again im not totally dead set on using the servos and drives out of a robot
but it seemed like a good way to get a complete drive system cheap
and im hoping someone can slide me some technical information
about these specific ones so can at least see if the motors
are powerful enuf to move the table around

also yes i posted in the mailing list
and got a couple good responses so far