well after some research it looks like the duet 2 is just going to be too much of a faff for what i need. I want to be able to control the vfd spindle which is a no go, and i want to home the y axis linear rails individually which can be done but there are all sorts of hoops I would need to jump through in order to get this to work.

Can anyone recommend another controller? seen a few on ebay but im not sure on the support if any