Yeah, I was totally disappointed with the whole drawer slide thing. What do you want to make with your machine? I wanted to be able to use mine to build full scale homebuilt airplane wing cores so I needed a pretty big machine that was capable of a high degree of accuracy. Most everyone else I've read about or talked to are making model wings. If you want to find some more people to discuss this with, check out this forum:
http://groupyahoo.com/group/CNCFoamcutters/
and this one:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=469391
For a wire power source I just used a Wal-Mart 12V battery charger. I made a simple variable resistor by wrapping a piece of stainless steel safety wire around a board. I can vary the resistance by changing where the leads are clipped. I used the same thing for my homemade TIG welder. There are a couple of photos on this page:
http://members.cox.net/ahabsworkshop/TIG.htm
It's pretty quick and dirty but it gets the job done. I want to build a more sophisticated design using pulse width modulation and/or make it computer controlled. By looking at the schematic for the mm2001 board, the computer controlled heat portion looks pretty simple. I'll probably tackle that when I get my wire holder completed.