A control panel is added to a CNC lathe to retain the feel of a manual lathe for the times when you just want to quickly get a simple part done without programming. Two MPG wheels, e-stop, and run, stop, feed-pause buttons are also added to a DIY CNC conversion of a SouthBend lathe controlled by LinuxCNC. Using the hand wheels, LinuxCNC acts as a sophisticated DRO, and it’s easy to switch back to full CNC control.

External resources:
Bill Dirks’ BD-Tools (lathe conversion kits)
MPG wheel affiliate link
Github repository for LinuxCNC configuration files