Hi Mark,

I'm new to this forum myself, and stumbled on MyCNCUK while Googling for bits to complete my tabletop mill. I was going to go with servos, but the daunting complexity of feedback loops and tuning has put me off for now.

I totally understand what you are setting out to do, and commend you for taking it on with the limited means of a student. I'm forever canibalizing old photocopiers, printers and scanners, which will yield nice precision rods and bearings, drive pullies, ballraces, power supplies and stepper or even servo motors with encoders. For readers wanting to go the servo controller route with Gecko-style modular purchases, I've stumbled across this guy on my doorstep here in Pacific Coast Canada: DMM-Tech.com who supplies servo drivers and controllers and motors at prices comparable to the popular Gecko stepper stuff. No connection, or recommendation, I just happen to know of them.

Off-topic, my own project is conversion of a wood mortising machine into a table top mill, using steppers and ball screw actuators. The objective is a compact, very accurate steel and aluminium-capable 3-axis (expandable to 4) bench-top sized machine, with a work space of about 6 X 8 X 8 in, or 1500 X 2000 X 2000 mm.