[CarveOne]

Making your own parts with your lathe and mill will be a good learning experience in itself.

I am a self taught home shop hobby machinist myself and have spent many long evenings browsing the machinist forums on Yahoo Groups and many other places learning about the subject. My dad was an automobile mechanic before you could buy rebuilt generators, starters, and voltage regulators and browse anything but books. He was the only one in the shop that could rebuild anything mechanical or electrical on a car (well, they were a wee bit simpler back in the 50's too). He would be envious of my machinery if he were still alive. My brother is my complete opposite and thinks pliers and screwdrivers are too technical for him.

I would suggest using the parts you have now to reconstruct your violin carving machine with cnc (if you want to continue making violins) and plan ahead for a larger more general use type of machine. You can acquire the new parts while having the use of the violin machine to make parts for the larger machine. What you learn with this conversion will help you know what you want the second machine to do, look like, and how large it needs to be.

CarveOne