[Bubba]

Jack,
When I originally converted my mill/drill to cnc, I had all the concerns that you express. I wanted it all. However like many of the posts above, I was convinced that I should not worry about the hand wheels etc.
It has now been a couple of years or so since the conversion to ball screws and full cnc and I am happy to say that I don’t miss the hand wheels one bit. Matter of fact they would get in the way. When doing setup or a miscellaneous drill hole, I find jogging or MDI operations to be far better than I could ever do with the hand wheels. Fast jog is much faster than I could ever turn a hand wheel and cuts are smoother as the feed is steady compared to what I could do with a hand wheel.
You indicate you still want the existing power feed, but the cnc hardware will replace that and you still have the same functionality.

When I did mine, (a round column by the way), there was not much in the way of “kits” that I could find so I basically did a lot of reading on the web and looking at a ton of pictures to see how others did it and then sat down with cad and figured it out myself (along with asking a LOT of questions in this forum). This also gave me the satisfaction of saying “I did it”. Additionally, I learned a lot along the way on how everything is put together and how to fix it when (not if) something goes wrong. Would I do it differently today and starting over again? Sure but there isn’t that much that I would change and it was a challenge to machine the parts on the mill itself and then get it assembled, took a lot of planning to be able to machine the parts. IH puts together a good kit and I am not knocking him, but for me this is a hobby and I like to do as much of the design and work myself as I can.

Good luck on your conversion and how about a log (with lots of pictures) on your progress.