I purchased a used Taig mill about a year back. It was a manual mill that had been upgraded to CNC. I thought it was a great way to get into the machining world. That being said, my knowledge and terminology is very limited in the machining world. I am looking to upgrade my machine, but first current specs:

1/5 HP motor @ 1725 RPM
Short X Table
3/4-16 spindle
1/4-20 Lead Screws

Now to upgrade all of these parts individually would cost roughly $1700 from Taig. Or I could purchase a new "CNC Ready" machine for ~$2000 and swap my steppers. I'm pretty well convinced on just buying the whole thing since the cost difference is small and the down time would be a lot less. However, I wanted to make sure I understand the implications before I commit to buying a new machine.

- I own 6 a2z tool holders in various diameters. Will these tool holders work with the new er16 headstock?
- I run LinuxCNC. Since I purchased this machine used, I have never gone through the setup process. I am assuming moving to ball screws, a new setup file will be required? I have watched some videos on youtube and the setup seems fairly straight forward. Is this a safe assumption?


Bonus question: The whole purpose for me upgrading is to increase productivity. I currently can only run my machine at 11 in/min due to lost steps on the Z axis (weight of the motor seems to be the problem). Moving to ball screws should reduce the friction load drastically allowing me to increase my speed without losing steps. I am hoping this will make my controller or PC the limiting factor. If I am not happy with the rates, what would be the next thing to upgrade on the controller or PC?

Current setup:
Gigabyte GA-D525TUD Mobo
Intel ATOM @ 1.8 GHz
Standard HDD
2 GB of RAM
I use onboard video & parallel port. There is one PCI slot available.

Applied motion HT23-299 stepper motors (not sure how they are wired)
3x Applied Motion 2035 controller cards
CR10R10 Parallel Input Card? (Input is Parallel port from PC, output is to the steppers)


PS. I understand moving while cutting is based on the material being cut, tool being used, etc., but 11in/min while in air is painful. If I can move around 50 in/min in air my program lengths can be cut anywhere from 30-50%.