Originally Posted by
johnmac
Bob, I'm not a machinist, but I will give you some problems I think I see.
If you use gearmotors, you may not be able to hand feed while the motor is coupled. If you have a hand wheel at the motor, it may take a lot of cranking due to the gear reduction. If the gearmotors don't have brakes, you may have trouble not overshooting the stop point.
Sounds like you need stepper drivers with a built in controller that lets you run the motors without external control. Then you could have push button switches for direction control.
I used to service machines that worked this way. It had slow and fast buttons and rocker direction switches.
Just my thoughts.
John