Denford Orac CNC

Hello all,

I decided to have a go at building the Gingery lathe. I went for a poodle down to the boat building area of Merseyside and sourced some heavy U shaped channelling for the bed support rarther than cast it like it's suggested. I took the chunk into school to drill the first few holes out that are used to mount the bed to it when the technician was alerted by me asking for imperial drill sizes (I'm in England). We had a really good talk for a while and he told me he'd put it on a surface grinder etc for me, perhaps but that he'd expect it to take years (Literally) to build. So did another teacher but he also told me unless a work piece passes through the spindle bore of the chuck on a lathe I couldn't work it, limiting any work to about 20mm OD. I think he was perhaps over estimating the level of accuracy and ridigity this lathe was aimed at but anyhow...

He told me the old Denford Orac CNC Lathe they have is being bined because it hadn't ever been used more than a couple of times by the students in it's entire life. The technician Chris an incredible nice person and said I could have the lathe for £50. It's fitted out for CNC with a manual G-Code panel on the front, here's someone else's: http://www.gandmtools.co.uk/photos%20251-300/0284.html
They're sorting out with the school if I can buy it as a member of the public. I'm planning to fit this beaut out with a proper interface for my desktop and stick it in the garage. A few questions. Are these (Denford) bad machines? They sell quite small stuff from what I've seen. Will I be able to capture the spindle control (It's inifitly variable up to 2000rpm)? This will be stepper driven won't it? Would it be worth Gecko'erising it or should I stick with Dan's gear?

Thanks,
John



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