CNC Mill conversion

My brother (mechanical engineer) and I were working on developing our own rapid prototyping process, where we could either draw (AutoCAD or Solidworks) or 3D scan a part that we wanted to make, and then machine the part, and test it – all within a day.  I had developed a 3D scanner that created full 3D mesh files, and we had student versions of AutoCAD and Solidworks, so we needed a way to output these files to a mill.  My father bought us a small, cheap benchtop mill from Grizzly, and we came up with a plan to convert it to full CNC.  We used a ball screw conversion kit to change from lead screws to high precision ball screws, which had less backlash and much lower friction, and then put in stepper motors and drivers.  We researched and chose Keling tech drives and motors because they were specifically designed for small mills.  We used an old computer case to house the electronics, and bought an old computer ($100) to run the software.
Once the mill was built, we chose CAMBAM to create the g code and Mach3 to run the g-code and drive the motors.  We chose this software as it didn’t cost nearly as much as software like MasterCam, but still had thousands of users and an active help forum.  This came in very handy when we were trying to get all the parameters correct to cut some simple profiles.
One of the pictures shows a hemispherical part that was a mold we cut out.  The mold was they used on our homemade thermoforming machine, to make parts.  We can now go from concept to part in a single day.