That's a really good question and not easily answered.

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If you are happy with a keyboard, mouse, perhaps touchscreen and of course the PC beside your PC then the answer is LinuxCNC is better.

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If all you want is the occasional metric thread on an imperial lathe (or the other way around) and perhaps power feed that stops 0.001" from the spinning chuck jaw without the space taken up by a PC then you have two choices.? An Electronic Lead Screw kit or Automatic Gearing with a travel limit.? And we're really just talking about systems that have only the Z axis (Carriage) powered.

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Add a motor to the cross slide and we slide (ha ha) closer into the CNC side of things.? Once you have control of both axis the possibility of tapering is possible.? Or even tapered threading.? And if you only use the lathe 5x per year and thread only once then the effort to learn/relearn the G-Codes to do simple things becomes mostly annoying.

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Today I had a plastic plumbing fitting that tapered in a bit.? I just wanted to slide in a brass insert and epoxy it in place.? I mounted it in the chuck, installed a boring bar and with the hand wheel moved in, tweaked the cross slide till it scraped and then slowly moved the hand wheel until I felt it touch the bottom.?

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Moved the carriage out of the way, test fit the brass piece. ?Now it slid in to the bottom.? Job done.? All possible with a pendant and LinuxCNC except that it's probably a good idea to measure how deep and set a zero first.? Harder to 'feel' when the bottom is reached.? Could have done it with my ELS.? Just easier to do it manually.

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So it boils down to what you do with your lathe, how much space you have, and if you want to power both axis.

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John Dammeyer

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