[boatlover]

Hello, I just picked up a used Prolight 3000 lathe for $500. It's missing the control box but I'm kinda glad it's gone because I probably would have converted it any way to use Mach 3 instead of the Prolight software.

The lathe is pretty cool as it's a slant bed lathe and has an eight position tool changer, a pneumatic operated chuck and the door opens with pneumatics too so you can have it open and close with your computer. Also the chuck can be removed and a 5C collet will fit right inside the spindle with out having to buy a special 5C chuck. The seller said he also had a standard chuck that went with the machine and to my surprise it was a Bison brand chuck!

I'm going to keep the original stepper motors at this time and add some KL 6050's or KL 5056 drives. I'm not sure about the breakout board yet. I really want to buy the combo board from Campbell Designs but they sell for $250! So it may be the Breakout board plus from Campbell Designs or a C-11 board from CNC4PC. The power supply will be a 56 volt toroid transformer with two secondary taps for 5 and 12 volts to run a few extra things.

Each axis already has limit switches on the machine as well as a micro switch in the tool changer so wiring it up to a breakout board should be pretty easy.

Here are some pictures of the lathe. I will post more as the build progresses.