Hi all
Please bear with me as this is my first post and start of my journey into CNC
I've just bought a Denford orac lathe with ATC, mechanically it appears in very good condition but is missing all the control gear and electronics etc.

Unfortunately i have almost no knowledge of CNC , computers or electronics so after several weeks of reading all i can i am starting to realise this is going to be a very steep learning curve, but i'm hoping where there's a will there's a way and this can be made into a fairly capable and accurate machine to produce small parts in mild steel , ali and acetal.

As this is all very new to me i'm trying to break the project down into manageable parts,
so after a general clean / check over the lathe and hooking the spindle motor up to a VFD to test it the next step seems to be to choose some form of control hardware.

As my limited computer experience is with windows machines I'm fairly keen to use mach 3 software as i think i will find it easier to get my head around than linux based software ,although after lots of reading it seems that there are issues with most controllers and mach 3 when used with a lathe , mostly seemingly based around there accurate threading abilities.

So far from what i can tell the best option seem to be with a CS labs CSMIO/IP-S controller + CSMIO-ENC threading module,
which although seemingly the most expensive option if this saves me months of head scratching and trying to choose various pieces of compatible hardware its probably worth the extra money.

Before i bite the bullet though I would be very grateful though for anyone's thoughts or experiences with using this controller on a lathe, are there better options or equally is this completely over the top and would i do just as well with something else ( like an ethernet smooth stepper and BOB etc).

Finally am i likely to be able to get the ATC to work with the CS labs controller and Mach 3 , i don't know the model name for the ATC but its the one driven by a small DC motor that is fitted to some orac lathes as standard.

Apologies for the rather long winded first post but it seemed to make sense to give a little background if only to explain my lack of knowledge at the moment.