Does this sound normal?

[JAZZCNC]

Do you need to use more than 4 axis?.
I know of another guy who has the AXBB-E. It is a good unit however.....
If you want to use a 5th or 6th axis you need another breakout board to go into channel 3's non isolated IDC port.
The optocouplers on the isolated channel 2 outputs aren't fast enough for pulsing by the looks of it.
He got a UCSB board for chnl 3 and all is well.
Other than that they're decent units.

The motion controller is exactly the same one as the UC300, the only difference is the I/O board of the AXBB-E only provides 4 Axis outputs with provision for 2 more using an external breakout board. Other than that the motion controller side and performance are exactly the same. The only reason really to use a UC300 over the AXBB-E is if you need more I/O for things like ATC, etc.

Closed loop is a little misleading though so I'm hoping to eventually change to Lichuan servo's instead.

There is nothing misleading to the closed-loop stepper system, it does everything it says on the tin.? It's people misunderstanding the difference between steppers and servos which causes confusion.
The loop is closed back to drive using the encoder for error checking just like a Servo works and if the error threshold is exceeded the drive faults.
The BIG difference is in the power and performance of AC or DC Servo motors compared to Steppers, how they actually work regards closed loop is very very similar.