Hello all,

I have a 15 year old 14" Standard-Modern CNC lathe with a Fagor 800TGI control. The lathe is in great shape and machines well, but I hate the control. I won't go into all the reasons why. I just think it's time to upgrade. The only way I can justify swapping controls is if I can do it on a small budget. This is more of a hobby lathe and I don't make my living off of it. I've been considering going to a Mach (Artsoft) PC-based control. My drive motors are all brushless DC type which are in great shape. I also have a spindle encoder which I would like to start using (threading, etc). I've done some research on what it would take to replace the Fagor with a Mach and understand that I would need to convert the Mach step and direction signals to +/- 10V analog for use with my existing drives. I have no interest in changing to steppers so that's not an option. I'm looking for pros & cons to making this swap and am hoping to hear from those who have considered or done a similar conversion.

Thanks in advance,
MotoDan