Hi All

I bought an Amadeal CJ18A Mini Lathe a few years ago and its been a good little machine for me, now I know this is a Chinese Clone machine and they dont have a great reputation but for what I use it for, making small aluminium and steel parts for Robotics projects it works well enough.

However one thing I have always struggled with is my own ability and would like to create more complex parts and want to convert the lathe to CNC.

So my idea is to change the lead screw to a ball screw and use a Nema 23 420 Oz Stepper Motor for this axis.

However on the compound slide I am not sure what to do as the space is really constrained so not sure I could get a ballscrew to replace the current screw or just attach another Nema23 420 Oz to the existing screw?

Due to the noise it makes I would like to remove all the different gears and be able to index the spindle, have better speed control and still be able to cut threads so was thinking about either changing the motor to a servo motor or a closed loop stepper motor. Is this even possible?

Any help or advice would be great.

Cheers DJ