Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan View Post
The servo motor+drive, or closed loop stepper+drive are themselves closed loop, but the system as a whole arguably isn't as Mach3 doesn't know what the following error is. When the fault pin from the driver is connected to an input to Mach3, then Mach3 knows when the error exceeded the set threshold (i.e. the motor was operated outside its ratings for too long) and can act accordingly. You can set it up this way for servos, stepper based servos and stepper drivers with stall-detection.

Yes I know all this and fully agree, I also admit I may have miss read what you meant but my initial point was that Servo's offer nothing more other than linear torque than these Closed loop Stepper systems do unless you close the Loop properly at the controller which like you say is another can of worms we both don't want to open.

Whether or not you can find servo's cheaper I think is a close call and I'd say not unless cheap chinese offerings and certainly not respected brand names Like Leadshine unless second hand. Then you also have the other can of worms of Pulse generation and what's needed to connect too and get the rated speed out of those servos, which makes those potentialy cheaper servo's suddenly not so cheap.!!

It's here where servo's don't match these drives for ease of use and setup which to your average DIY user with limitied knowledge and time is quite important. . . . They essentially just plug n play and offer just the same accuracy.!! . . . Which was my whole initial point.