A simple but effective way to power my Y axis. Its a 15 dollar harbor freight 12 or 14 volt drill motor! I slipped on a psc of pvc pipe and an end cap from a spray paint can to pretty up the motor a bit! when I want to use the hand feed I just loosen the chuck from the extension shaft underneath. If your using a fly cutter or facing with an end mill, and you take a fine cut and slow the feed rate way down, the finish comes out like it has been polished. See the comment under the pic of the control boxes for speed control data etc. This was a very simple addition, only requiring that the chuck is exactly lined up with the drive screw extension under the bed so as not to cause binding. The shaft is just a psc of aluminum rod bored to fit the lead screw under the table (held on with set screws), and the other end is just turned to about 3/8 to fin into the drill chuck. A couple of cut off bolts and a scrap of plate was all that was required.

I use a an overrun small 12v DC motor fitted witth a pin chuck and mounted in a housing which has an extension that slides freely in the tailstock chuck. This gives me a high speed (15,000 RPM) tailstock drill. Since I manually feed the motor housing I can directly feel both drill torque and feed pressure