Lathes doing great, been using it for quite a while now but its just recently that I have got the front toolpost up and running and that was a bit of a hassle to get done in Mach. Brians working on Front/Rear toolpost selection soon so should be good in the end, at the moment I am having to do a workaround but it also works fine.
 I ended up getting Allen Bradley DSD drives, well one Allen Bradley and one Giddings and Lewis DSA drive but essentially they are the same thing apart from the colour and name
 I have 10Nm AC servo on the Z axis and a 7Nm on the X, both copuple 1:1 through timing belt and pulley (original spec)  rapids are restricted to 3400mm/min at the moment as I wasnt happy with the slow speed cogging due to electronic gearing in the drives. Once the threading sync is done in the SmoothStepper then I will put one on the lathe and potentially I could put  the rapids up to 15M/min without any electronic gearing or 30M/min with the 2:1 gelectronic gearing that I have at the moment, I think 10 will be more than enough though , the original was 5M/min.
 I have a couple of vids on You Tube of the lathe, noithing exciting but it does show it working, still doesnt really show the size of the lathe, just wish I could get a shot of it and my Colchester Triumph side by side.
You will see the vids here  http://www.youtube.com/user/HoodScotland
Have some pics of the finished  control panel etc but they are at home so will have to add them later.
Hood

Heres the only pic I can find of the control panel, its still got the stainless cap screws in it, now have black button head cap screws that blend in a lot better. Have also added a few pics of some of the things I have made.
Hood

and another
Hood

  Very nice!!!

Looks good Hood. You do good work and the machining ain't bad either. 

Some of those pieces look familiar.

Brett

Thanks guys

Yes Brett, these piddly wee pullstuds (one shown in the bottom of the picture) went to some crazy guy in the USA, goes by the name of scrote or something like that. You heard of him? think he has a toy mill that he is doing, Hurco or something like that



Hood

Started to get the spindle  AC Servo fitted today, first pic is the plate the motor mounts to, second is the bracket that bolts to the lathe and third and fourth are of the motor in place. It is hard to believe that the 20mm wide GT3 belt will take the place of the 6 Vee belts but Gates software assures me that I have actually overdesigned it by quite a bit, time will tell.
 I still have to either machine out a smaller taper bush to 42mm dia for the motor or wait until the bearing suppliers are open again, I will then try the servo out from the laptop rather than wiring through Mach to make sure it is going to be powerfull enough as its a fair bit of wiring to integrate it.
Hood

Nice bracketry Hood. Who'd ya get to do the welding for ya ? hehehe

What NM was that again ?

What a HORSE !

 Ridgid Tapping...Here we come !

RC

Dont know who did the welding but its a bloody mess.
The motor is 83Nm (735 Lb-in) continuous, 152.5 Nm (1350 Lb-in) peak.
Not sure on true rigid tapping as at the moment I still have it through the headstocks backgear so there is a bit of backlash. Not sure how much but think I may need a floating holder. I could go direct to the spindle but that would do away with the backgear and also spoil my intentions of fitting a chucking cylinder when I can find one.

Hood

Well its been a while but I have done some cutting, still have a long way to go to get it finished. Next on the list will be to get the front toolpost piped up and its switches fitted and wired, so until thats done I cant bore or drill or even use back facing tools.
Hers a pic of the part and heres a link to the video. To give an idea of the size of the lathe the  stock is 70mmDia and 95mm length outside the jaws.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvSh6j8x4Gc

I noticed in the video you are turning the spindle clockwise as viewed from the tailstock and your cutting tools are facing up.  I was doing this with my little Taig lathe and when I went to thread, I ended up with left handed threads.  I had to turn all my tools upside down and run the spindle the other way.  How do you do threading?  Run the spindle the other way and put your threading tool in the front tool post?

Vince