Knee Mill Z-Axis CNC Conversion Alternatives...

Folks,

Newbie question: I am looking at an old Clausing Atlas mill and would
like to be able to convert it to CNC down the road.

There appear to be two likely ways to convert the Z-axis:

1. drive the existing fine feed, or
2. drive the existing manual knee feed.

Either would mean living with whatever backlash is present (or
tweakable) in the existing mechanisms. Actually converting either of
these mechanisms to ball screws would appear to require a non-obvious
approach.

Am I missing something? What do folks actually do to CNC the Z-axis
on knee mills?

Thanks in advance...

Jim

"Gnats *gotta* stand on the shoulders of bigger critters!"