Re: Spindle motor selection for small cnc lathe
Just to define your machine, what you are proposing is a small lathe with a C axis and live tooling. No problem at all. All you need is a servo motor to drive the spindle, this is exactly the type of application that they are designed to do. For some serious mill/turn work you might also concider adding a Y axis, doing so might make your engraving easier.
But your budget might be a bit small for this project. For a small tabletop lathe, I would think a 500 to 750W servo motor would most likely work fine to drive the spindle. You might be able to use a smaller servo motor depending on the size of the lathe, but you don't want to run out of torque.
Jim Dawson
Sandy, Oregon, USA