[Newbie] Replacing or reusing old motor control?

[xbartx]

This is going to be an advanced project and may take more investment in time than you want to put in
Think about it- what are you planning to use this machine for?

d, can you achieve what you want without going down this rabbit hole.

I understand the advise and thoughts on putting time and money into this lathe.
I do think it will be able to do what I what with it ( learning basic machining, learning cnc machining, turning small parts for a couple hobbies of mine)
The lathe was $100, Acorn control board $350, stepper drivers $60, will use the free software for a bit then upgrade lathe software $175.
The original stepper motors work and plan on using them for now. So $500 so far, about $700 including the upgrade lathe software.
That doesn't seem like a ton of money these days. If I can't figure out how to integrate the existing speed controller, I can just manually adjust the speed and direction and not go through Acorn.

 

[matthewsx]

I understand the advise and thoughts on putting time and money into this lathe.
I do think it will be able to do what I what with it ( learning basic machining, learning cnc machining, turning small parts for a couple hobbies of mine)
The lathe was $100, Acorn control board $350, stepper drivers $60, will use the free software for a bit then upgrade lathe software $175.
The original stepper motors work and plan on using them for now. So $500 so far, about $700 including the upgrade lathe software.
That doesn't seem like a ton of money these days. If I can't figure out how to integrate the existing speed controller, I can just manually adjust the speed and direction and not go through Acorn.

I just want to be clear, I do think it's a worthy project and you should have a good little machine when you're done. The "rabbit hole" I was talking about is figuring out decades old proprietary control systems.

Acorn stuff is good but I couldn't justify it for my project when the discount boards on Amazon are so much cheaper. I did invest in a Mesa control board but never got around to setting it up.

Linux CNC is well developed and has a large user base, it costs nothing besides your time to learn it, and it'll never change licensing models or ask you to pay for upgrades.

If you've already bought the stuff and decided to use Mach III I'm not putting that down. Your biggest investment by far will be your time, which if you're like me will be time well spent learning new skills.

John