My lathe had big DC motors but the drives and control were not part of the deal so I had to try and get drives. The motors were far too big for any of the normal drives such as Geckos or Tek10's but as I didnt know too much about servos at the time it didnt stop me trying LOL. In the end I picked up AC servos and drives on eBay that did the job and they accepted Step/Dir.
The first drives I got from eBay were analogue and I did try them out, (well kind of) with the top boards from the Tek10 drives as they converted Step/Dir to analogue, however the drives I am using now came along at a good price so I never went any further with the convertors.
Hood