Hi John

Thanks for reply and photos, very helpful.

On closer inspection a gas strut is going to be awkward to mount because of stroke length. Not impossible but a bit of a hassle. I haven't discounted this yet as I like the "assistance" it provides to the motor when lifting the table. Maybe I will end up with both strut and brake working to complement each other.

In regards to the braked stepper set up I have a couple questions:

I am interested to know, in terms of £, what is relatively "cheap" in your mind? - based for example on the Vexta example you show. - what would you pay?

Secondly if I sourced stepper and driver without a brake I think I could add a brake set up, I guess I could control the brake either from my motion control board or simply release brake when drives are powered up.

Got some work to do on slideway, I found some play in the vertical axis that needs sorting first.

Cheers

Andy