CNC Turning on a standard CNC mill

[Boyan Silyavski]

The best DIY or in other words "pro but on the cheap" implementation i have seen is the now called INTURN

You could search the cnczone for the build thread as it started there and see how it progressed. Now i see he has some dedicated electronics , see diagram bellow.
Best would be to contact Steve directly.

[Leadhead]

Thanks silyavski - I had not envisaged at this time adding a 4th Axis rotary encoder .
Just a rotation device. Which is simple enough. So I guess my inquiry is a software question.

[magicniner]

If you want to use a mill with a lathe spindle mounted in X, using Mill X as Lathe Z and Mill Z as Lathe X then there's nothing special to do apart from fixing a tool to the mill head and configuring your axes in Mach3 and correctly defining your machine in any CAM package you use.

[Leadhead]

magicniner - Yes suddenly dawned on me to just flip the axies. Seems to work OK. Just have to finish the rotary bit.

[Jonathan]

If you only need to machine small parts, then you can do it like I (and many others) did: