Improving a lathe spindle head.

[metric_taper]

I am not a fan of screw on chucks, I much prefer a taper fitting like my old Colchester Student had.

My other lathe has a D1-8 spindle nose. I like that I can power turn in both directions.

I had to build a bridge crane as the 12" chucks are now getting beyond my strength limit of back damage.

I also like keyless chucks, but they have this same issue.

I hope you document your CNC lathe conversion. I've thought of the same, I'm curious about methods of attaching a shaft encoder to the spindle. Keeping it out of the way for long stock though the spindle hole appears to need some sort of cog belt and timing gears. Then a quality encoder with ball bearing and such is needed, and there must be wear to worry about in all this.