So I was cleaning the shop and wondering what to do with this 9x20 lathe I picked up for spare parts. And it occurred to me, that's practically all the parts a guy would need to cut tubing. The gears on my stepper motors even match the teeth on the lathe shaft. And so I dove in.

I saw the tube coping calculator and I get how the length of the curve wraps around the pipe so you just turn the pipe and move the gantry up and down (for your Y) to get the cut, but how would you set up the motor to turn the pipe so an inch drawn flat is an inch worth of turning? I hope that makes sense. I'm going to try to post a picture of how I'm going to mount the stepper motor to turn the lathe chuck, with the three different gears, I don't know how to figure out how to set the stepper motor up to turn everything correctly.

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My ad hoc plan is to mount the lathe head at the far end of the table in a way that can be easily mounted or taken down, hang some metal bearings from the gantry for the pipe to rest on just behind the torch head and go form there. All that's mechanics and details. I'm just clueless on how to set up the additional motor (and does it need to be the same size stepper as the other 4? Just wondering). Thanks for any help.