Hello everyone, my name is Brian

Posted by: @brianchat

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I am new here and as a semi-retired electrician who worked on various electrical/electronic equipment. I am now finishing the setup of my machine shop which I am converting manual lathe and milling machine to cnc. My preferred software would be linux based. I am hoping to get some info to direct me in the right direction so as to stop from re-inventing the wheel. Hopefully as my project progresses I can find the right path to follow.

Welcome to the forum Brian. While we know a lot about software and related hardware, you might also want to find a forum that specializes in the Lathe and Milling machines that you want to modify.

I have gone to cnc build sites and my first impressions is that my equipment is old and to modify the machine for cnc accuracy would be over my hobby budget. I would like to replace the X and Y axis drive motors on the mill with servos and rotary encoders and have a manual control station (joystick) for travel and a connection to a digital readout for travel distance. Once this is working I may (depending on accuracy of machine adjustments) go to a cnc controller. The interface and software needed to operate the proper servos is going to be the first step.

Hi @brianchat,

  Welcome to the forum ... this forum clearly attracts people who are experienced in electronic and computational aspects, which are the basis for a very sigificant part of the 'magic' involved in the transition from manual tools to CNC tools. I should like to think you will find a lot of interest to you.

To balance the discussion, I suspect that the majority of those on this forum have not converted a lathe or mill to CNC control, and hence there will be specific aspects to your project, that will require you to do some research elsewhere. But that is part of the power of the Internet ... you are rarely restricted to a single source of anything.

I certainly haven't done any such conversion, but I note that many 'hobby size and price' mills (and 3D printers) use stepper motors, rather than servo motors and encoders.

Perhaps, you might like to start a new thread (this one is really just meant to introduce you as a person) in an appropriate DroneBot Workshop forum, explaining your strategy and inviting comments?

Best wishes for your project, Dave

@brianchat What you probably want is stepper or geared motors, servos typically are only used in low torque applications. Forums specific to this kind of equipment will be much more helpful than us software types.

Time to move this conversation to its own topic perhaps under Help Wanted once you have a basic design that requires motors under software control.

Welcome Brian,

I'm looking forward to seeing what you are doing and expect you'll have a lot to share.  Jeremy Fielding has a fun video about adding CNC to a table saw (

and he explains that it is his first coding project.  If you can break down your questions into small bites, I'm sure you can get some good input here.

Welcome again.