Want to convert a lathe. Where do I begin?

I've been a machinist for years, but I have no electronics experience at all.

I want to convert a lathe to LinuxCNC. This is a project I'm planning for my own home shop. Haven't even got the lathe yet. I'm looking at an old South Bend, and I'm not worried about the mechanical aspects of that, I'm just trying to understand what I would need for the control side.

I have no idea how to pick out servos, drives, a spindle VFD and encoder, or a mesa card, and I don't understand how they all work together. The manuals are waaaay over my head, and I can't find any resources appropriate to rank beginners like myself, so here I am. Can anyone break it all down for me, or point me in the right direction of a beginner guide to all this?

A much easier conversion is to start out with something that was already CNC from the getgo. Find an old cnc lathe whose old control is DOA or so old it's obsolete, then convert it to Linuxcnc. That way you don't have to calculate motor sizes, screw pitch and gear reduction, or motor and drive compatibility. All that was done by the machine's original engineers.

But to convert an old manual machine, for simplicity, using stepper motors is usually much simpler for a beginner to comprehend, as opposed to using servos.

With steppers all you need to do is size the motors large enough so you have the torque you need and that the gearing is such that you can get the speeds you want before the step-motor's torque curve falls to far. Just remember, with step-motors, the bigger they are, the faster the torque falls off with RPM.

Well I'd do that if I could, but I can't. It's a home shop, so I'm limited on space and power. The sorts of lathes I'm eyeing are things like old South Bends or maybe a new Grizzly...simple basic stuff that I can shoehorn into my basement.

The other aspect is, I want this to be a learning experience. You're right, there'd really be nothing wrong with a stepper build, but I guess I'm ambitious.

This is quite an interesting example of a Chinese lathe converted to CNC. I had one of these lathes and just upgraded recently but its not CNC
www.cnczone.com/forums/general-off-topic...320g-conversion.html

This is what he started with
www.machineryhouse.com.au/L141

What I found interesting given I had the same machine is how he stripped out the gearboxes on the headstock and the saddle and added ballscrews and stepper drives. I suspect NEMA 34 might be a better choice for the longitudinal feed as a mate of mine made a CNC lathe about the same size as this and ended up upgrading from a NEMA 23.

It doesn't hurt to check around. Check your local Craigslist, Ebay... You might find something, not all cnc lathes are huge. You might find a little EMCO Compact or something more like what you wanted in the end.

I just did my X3 mill. There are kits out there so I knew what size I needed.

But you can source ball screws from several places or even use your acme screws. Fabbing bracket will be the hardest part. But if you have access to a mill you should be able to fabricate them.

its quite a challenge to find a good fitting kit for CNC retrofit
good luck