I've been working on a moving gantry cnc router design for quite a while. As most projects like this go, I've made a lot of changes along the way such that the design is quite different than it started out. Initially I bought some garden variety 1.8 degree steppers from Automation Technologies but then decided they were altogether inappropriate for what I was doing. After reviewing industrial motors that appear frequently used, and looking at the requirements for my machine, I decided that Oriental Alphastep 5 phase closed loop motors looked good. I got decent deals on the motors for the vertical axis and the short cartesian axis but I’m kind of stuck with the long axis. I need two motors with gearboxes and I’m not finding the exact models (and drivers) available for a price that I’m willing to pay.

So, I decided to look at the ClearPath servos that I’ve read so many wonderful things about. Wouldn’t you know it, they have a motor that looks perfect as far as torque and RPM! And without a gearbox at all! And it costs less, brand new, than the used Oriental motors would be.

I’m planning to use LinuxCNC with a Mesa 7i76e. I think that using SDSK motors with step and direction signals, they can be used in basically the same way that the Oriental motors on the other axises would be used. But, I figured I would ask here for opinions. Are there any issues, in this context, with mixing servo and stepper motors on the same machine?