Its just a wee lathe Russ, the original motor was a 1/2Hp DC motor and the 3016 is 1Hp so it should be plenty if the original was. If not the orig motor was 2000rpm and  geared 2:1, I have kept the gearing at 2:1 but the 3016 is 5000rpm so I could gear by 4:1 and still have more than the original speed.
Time will tell though as you say.

What size lathe are you planning on putting it on? This is only about a 6 inch swing lathe, its based on a Myford ML10.
Hood

Yes Dan, got an angle grinder  that makes short work of it :-D

Hood

Hood,
  I have 2 of these. McLean #500
5C collet w/pneumatic closer.
1 hp DC, 1/1 (roughly)
The current control is just timers and relays for the cycle. Very basic and simple.
Will neen one axis with live tooling and C for the spindle.
The 3016 reduced 1.5 to 2 / 1 would be OK for speed, just looks a bit dinky.
I'm probably under estimating the servo.
Thanks,
Russ

Yes Dan, got an angle grinder  that makes short work of it :-D

Hood

Ah.. OK. It just looked so good that I thought you acquired a Plasma CNC and didn't tell us

Dan

Russ,
 looks a solid wee lathe and with it having a 1HP at the start you should gear the 3016 so its around the same max RPM as the original motor was. That way you will still have the same HP as before and plenty torque I would imagine.
Hood

Dan,
 No room here for anything else, wouldnt mind a plasma but its not likely to happen. I often mill bits out though, the Beaver has 800 x 400 travels so its not too bad for things like that.

Hood

Hood, as somebody who's removed the steppers, how were the ballscrews attached to them on yours?

It was just a drilled out piece of steel with rollpins through the motor and ballscrew.
The backlash take-up was relying on the motor bearing  and a single thrust  which was pretty poor IMO.
Hood

Cheers.
Sounds just like mine, but I never went any further than taking the ballscrew cover of the Z-axis. From what I remember, mine never looked like it had any substantial bearings anywhere, so I guess they never changed that part of the design.
I'm weighing up a couple upgrade options, and it looks like modifying or replacing the ballscrews needs factored into the options.

No need to modify the ballscrews really, well as long as they are ok. I used two thrust bearings, one at the motor end and another at the tailstock end then just used an oldham coupling to connect screw to motor.
Hood