One ring to rule them all?

[irving2008]

Listen to Jazz on motor drivers.. nothing you can develop with an Arduino and an off the shelf motor shield will be useful. The typical Arduino motor shields are toys, good enough for a NEMA17 stepper for a 3D printer or a small robot, even the so-called high-current ones are limited in reality because they don't have big enough heat-sinks and are restricted to 24v. For the sort of machine you're contemplating to perform at any useful rate, those screws will require big NEMA23 or even 34 size steppers, and the driver will need to deliver phase currents of 4 - 6A @ 60-80V
.
Plus an off-the-shelf stepper driver has complex algorithms for anti-stall, anti-resonance, fault-alarms, etc. You won't get close to anything useable developing your own software or using open-source stuff for several months if not years of development...