I was considering doing a conversion on a charter oak RF45 clone. Now I have an opportunity to purchase a Siber hegner RB-1 CNC machine. It is similar to the one in the following Ebay posting.

Siber Hegner RB 1 CNC Vertical Miller Inv 29053 | eBay

Anyway does anyone have any experience with this machine. I have not been able to look at it yet but I will soon. I think this will be a much better machine than the charter oak. It is much larger and stiffer. The main question I have is since it is a used machine what may be required to keep it running or upgrade it for better operation.

How difficult would it be to upgrade the electronics control from the old Fanuc controller to Mach. Do you typically need to replace the servo drives or can you simply interface a smoothstepper to the existing axis drives?

Would I need to replace the axis drive motors also or just upgrade the servo drives?

The machine works as it sets now. I hope to see it run when I go to look at it. What tests should I run on the machine? I will try to run some backlash test on the machine but it may have compensation enabled.

Any advise is welcome.