Legacy Future

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Legacy of a Legacy
The makers of the Legacy have made changes to the product line since I bought my system but fundamentally the product has remained the same. Manual or expensive electric cranking of a lead screw controls both the router X-axis movement and Drive Center rotation via a series of gears. Manual operations also control the Y and Z axis.

After having used my system for a short while I decided that to get the most benefit from the machine it would need to be improved specifically in the area of ease-of-use. Don't get me wrong, the machine isn't "hard" to use, it's just inconvenient. Making fluted columns and such is the forte of the machine but this is rather tedious work. In fact, I characterize everything but the most simple X-Y work as Very tedious to Extremely tedious and error prone; at it's best, the operations are just plain tedious and inconvenient.
A Paper Legacy
With this in mind I set about looking for a way to relieve this tedium as well as greatly reduce the common errors made by the system and operator. I eventually came up with a paper design for a machine that would be driven by two electric motors that would entirely replace the existing gear train. I named this the Legacy Electric Drive (LED for short). The resulting design was still mostly manually controlled with electronics taking care of X axis and lathe drive movement, synchronization, indexing, and other important tasks. Because I didn't want to be tethered to a PC, my design was to use a stand-alone micro-controller directed by the operator. Even only controlling 2 of the four axis, the design promised to offer a ten-fold increase in the usefulness and capability over any Legacy model. For all intents and purposes it would make the stock Legacy look barbaric by comparison even though it would still be classified as a manually operated machine..		 LED Specification
Well, I never got around to creating this control system and my Mill fell into some disuse mainly because of the original problem; it's quite a bother to set the thing up and create even simple parts with it. Most of the operating time is pretty boring and although the motor drive system I made relieved some of the tedium, it basically only changed the level of it from unacceptable to undesirable; not enough of an improvement to make the system fun to use.

Time passed but I never forgot about the increase in capability and ease of use improvements the LED offered. Although the manufacturer never improved their system design to anything remotely close to the LED, events in the industry have moved forward significantly. Basic CNC technologies have made rapid advances in software, hardware availability, and component cost. These conditions have combined to bring down the cost and effort of entry into the world of CNC.
Another Tool Path
A complete turn-key CNC system is still quite expensive, much more so than typical Legacy Mills and the basic ones do not operate on a fourth axis which is what is needed to do lathe work. In order to get the forth axis going requires either additional expensive add-ons or a completely different CNC setup, basically a CNC lathe which are even more ridiculously expensive. A useable commercial CNC router capable of using a mid-size router is currently pricing out at about $6000 - $8000 (circa 2008) with the forth axis adding cost to that and this is really the rock bottom of turn key systems. The term "turn key" is somewhat of a misnomer as well since all mid size and up systems require significant assembly.  Obviously, for the majority of us, these options are prohibitively expensive to say the least.
There is another option however. Enterprising and motivated individuals have trail-blazed paths to do-it-yourself CNC machines. This is where most of the "advances" I referred to earlier have been made. A huge amount of information can be found on the web regarding shop made CNC lathes (round turning types), vertical mills (metal working types), and routers. Many of these machines can be built from commonly available materials, welded steel, aluminum plate / extrusions, and even wood. Plans for machines exist for free or modest fees as well as volumes of information on the electrical and software aspects needed to bring these designs to life.

At this date there still isn't a whole lot of information on forth axis control but that is likely to change in time. To date my searches turn up only very few individuals sharing information on a fully CNC version of a home made Legacy Mill.  One of these is Arthur Ransom who runs the Turning Around web site.		 Joe's 2006
A CNC non-ornamental lathe has already been done numerous times, nearly always on a metal lathes which are rarely outfitted with routers.  If all that was desired was non-ornamental spindles, the technology is all ready to go right now.  Ornamental turning is much more complex however; that is the important part of the trail that Mr. Ransom and a few other are blazing.
Crystal Ball
If I look into my crystal ball (which is no better than yours fwiw), I foresee other individuals adding to the work of creating a DIY CNC Ornamental Mill. Once someone gets the ball rolling others come in and expand upon the idea.  Although 4th axis capable CNC driver software exists, the main problem seems to be in converting 3D art into tool paths on a rotary axis (for a reasonable cost).  Once that final nail has been driven home, the doors are probably going to be wide open for true ornamental mills.

I also foresee (at some point) some main-stream manufacturer coming up with a Router Lathe that would look very much like a traditional lathe but utilize a router instead of a standard tool rest. The base machine would be capable of all of the same rounding work the Legacy can do now but probably be more limited in flat work.  Additional accessories would expand the capability of the machine such that it would be able to perform some rose engine work too.		 My own rough concept image of a cnc lathe. A real one would probably look differently
My belief is that there are two obstacles for a commercial Router Lathe. The first is vision by the manufacturers themselves; I don't think they perceive a market for such a tool therefore it probably looks like a risky endeavor to them.  In my opinion, such a tool would be eagerly sought after judging from the response received by the CarveWright machine. 

The second obstacle I see is software. To be appealing to main-stream woodworkers, the tool must be bundled with easy to use design software. Easy to edit standard templates would go a long way towards ease of use in this area but eventually owners will want to use their own designs; the software would need to be easy to use for this purpose.
What I would like to see in my crystal ball is an electric incarnation of the Holtzapffel lathe or even a decent electronically controlled rose engine, that doesn't seem to be happening though.  There are a few people who have re-created manual rose engines and ornamental lathes but from what I have been able to gather, there are far fewer people doing this compared to CNC work on many other tools.   Given the popularity of the lathe this is somewhat baffling to me. Rose Engine Shop
My Direction
To date, there is only one reasonable cost turn key commercial CNC Router option I would consider; this is the CarveWright.   From what I can gather, these things are selling like hot-cakes; perhaps this will provide some motivation and capital to produce a larger and hopefully reasonably priced big brother.

The cost of even the cheapest large format commercial systems are just way out of my league therefore they are basically not an option. It appears that even on these commercial systems there is a lot of owner assembly / adjustment / experimentation involved as well. If there is a lot of owner work involved anyway, I'm thinking, why not build the whole thing!

I've researched the free and fee CNC router plans currently available and believe that a reasonably sized basic XYZ router table can be constructed and brought to life for somewhere between $2000 - $4000.  I haven't decided upon a size yet.  A 4x8 machine would be nice but something that would perform well at this needs to be pretty beefy, probably with a lot of metal fabrication.  A 3x7 machine would be a good compromise but even this is a bit larger than the typical DIY design.  When machines get above table top size their structures need to be fairly sturdy to do the work.

With that in mind, I plan to attempt to build my own CNC router table, it will probably be a hybrid of one or more of the DIY plans. Notice that I didn't say I was going to build a CNC version of the Legacy. That's because I think it could be a mistake to try and put all that capability into a single machine, at least at first. I also think that I could keep a CNC router table busy and would want a dedicated lathe for true lathe work. By the time I am ready for fourth axis CNC work, I anticipate either some manufacturer coming out with such a lathe or more complete ground-work having been laid for a DIY Ornamental Router Lathe.