Rambaudi V2 to CNC conversion

Hello,
Ill introduce myself as this is my first post here on LinuxCNC forum pages.

My name is Steven, I am from the Netherlands and I am an electronics design engineer currently working for a company specialized in switchmode power converters.
Interest are Power electronics, model air plane building and flying, Lathe-turning, milling, building & driving electric vehicles.

To cut a long story short, I Recently bought a big old Rambaudi V2 milling machine. Its quite a beast by means of size & mass if I would be asked to describe it.
it is very similar to the manual Bridgeports that are in every 2nd youtube video on milling machine operations.
The quill is copied I think, as the R8 collet holder is identical.
The differences are mainly in the xy mechannism (huge worm screw on the x, and ball screw on the Y if I am not mistaken) and the Ram of the machine does not rotate over to the wrong side.
Additionally it has not only a rotating but also a tilting neck that is a rare option on these machine.

The best information I have found about this milling machine was on this site: www.lathes.co.uk/rambaudi/page2.html

My manual milling excersizes have progressed to the level where I can cut gears needed for my next project...
Turning the Rambaudi V2 into a CNC machine

I am somewhat familiar with Linux, have been using it as my desktop OS for the past 6 years, however I am totally new to the Linux CNC world.

Hoppefully someone can help me get in the right direction with a few questions.

1.The CNC conversion shall be closed loop by means of steppers and Linear scales. What interface cards should I get? Mesa 5I25 & 7I85S ?
2. The Home/index signal from glass-scales, whichs posistion is it generally located?
3. What PC platform is a good & reliable start ? eg. all recent Mini ITX with PCI bus connector available apply?

Id love to hear your thoughts , conceners or sarcasm if the questions above are not of interrest

//Steven

I'd like to show some progress I am making with the CNC conversion.

Rambaudi V2 to CNC Z-gearbox first test:

The conversion has almost completed, it is ready for milling, but some cable protection and clamps are yet to be installed.

My results with the mesa io cards, steppers & linear glass scales are what I hoped it to be. Cheap, accurate to 2...3x the glass-scale resolution. But the nema34 with the limited 60Vdc supply makes that the rapids are not fast.
14mm/sec is pushing it for the x&y. Z axis is crawling at 1mm/sec due to the gearbox.

I hope to upgrade the Z-axis with a much beefier setup in the future, but for now its more than I need as a hobby.

To show the machine actually works I recorded a video (with a phone this time) of testing both the CNC first steps and my first a attempt with a carbide cutter.
There is so much to learn still as I discovered the feed rates are hugely important with such tiny endmills, the deflection was more than 100 micro-meters causing uneven finish on the v-pocket, this failure in feedrate is audiable where it starts to dig-into the material. I am using fswizard on zero-divide.net They also have a mobile version which is great when your out in the man-cave and only have your phone as an internet connected device with you.

caution for audio: high pitched whine from spindle & cutter.