Clarkm,
You know as well as I do that your method is way too slow!
I have not written any software for 38 years, but I can think of another way to do that. My lathe's foot brake flips a switch and spreads two brake shoes in a drum on the spindle. I could use a position switch on the ways to turn on a field effect transistor that would drive a linear solenoid that would pull on the foot brake pull bar.
