Hi everyone,

Since finding CNCzone and building two CNC routers, I've really got the CNC bug and ended up buying a CNC lathe for no real reason other than the challenge of retrofitting it to work with a modern PC.

I intend to perform a complete conversion, including full control of the spindle, feedback from the spindle encoder for RPM and threading as well as handling all the control panel inputs on the lathe and the turret toolchanger.

To achieve the amount of I/O and control I need, I have developed my own Modbus board using a PIC microcontroller. Other than this and the parallel breakout board, I intend to use all the original drivers and other electronics in the lathe. This is a bit of a challenge for a software engineer like me! My experience with electronics is fairly limited.

I've made pretty good progress. I thought some of you may be interested in seeing details of the conversion which you can see on this page.

I hope you find it interesting!