Sorry for the quietness we had a holiday for a week and have been busy setting up a list of needed components.
The status we are now at is finalizing the design and making a ordering list so we can order all the components in one go. We ran into a bit of luck to day since we finally found the manual for the original spindle driver and managed to figure out the in/output values of the transformers with the help of one of our teachers. Once we get the components in ill see if I can get some pictures up again.
And to answers some of your questions:
Nice mill - looks like it has a granite column
Its a look a like, not even sure its stone at all.
Is a mach3 control going to be an improvement on the original benchman setup ?
To be fair we don't even know what the original benchman setup was from what we understood when we started the whole software system wasn't even functioning.
Can you run gcode or do you run a proprietary software with your Benchman?
Mach3 will be running the machine via Gcode, the Gcode is created using a converter on invertor files.
