The Nova DVR is a fine lathe. I think that they are great, but I do have a couple concerns about direct drive. The first is not an insurmountable obstacle by any means -- if you do vacuum chucking it just means that you will need to get a rotary coupler to go on the business end of the headstock unless I overlooked the part about a hollow spindle. The other concern is more significant -- the DVR uses a stepper motor and the air-gap clearance between the stationary field and rotor is only several thousandths of an inch. Since many woodturners crank a lot of tailstock pressure to "help" hold a large out of balance piece of wood, there is the probability of brinelling the bearing races from excessive axial loading. That would be bad enough on the typical belt driven spindle, but potentially destructive to the motor if the rotor and field core wore against each other. Hopefully, Technatool has beefed up the bearings of the DVR over the typical stepper motor bearings. Motors in general don't like axial loads or overhung radial loads.
Replacing the bearings in close clearance motors is a big deal and not something that someone without specialized tooling could do.
