Progressing slowly as & when I get time, the old control box for the machine now houses the computer, power supplies, drivers etc. The VFD is mounted on one of the machine legs, thought it best not to try & fit this in the control box with the other electronics. Bought an old flat screen monitor which I still need to fit to the side of the machine but once that is done it will be pretty much stand alone. Will do all the design work on another machine & just upload the gcode to it via usb. Only program installed is mach3 keeping everything to a minimum having read that mach3 likes it best that way.
One thing that did confuse me though was that when I tried to cut text it was cutting backwards, quick look at the mach support forum told me I had to reverse which ever axis was cutting the wrong way. I expected to have to reverse both the X & Y axis but only had to reverse one of them. Not sure if I have everything set up right now but it seems to work ok, is it usual to have to reverse just one axis ?