I'm in a class where we have to build a project, and I want to build a small rotary engraver that can do 10 digit phone numbers on the back of a rabies tag for my dad's vet clinic.

I don't want it to have a pc attached to it, I would like to do a microcontroller. I have a little experience with basic stamps, but thats about it.

I think I can handle the hardware part of the engraver, but I'm not sure how to do the software. It seems like it would be easy to use gcode for the digits, but I'm not sure how to connect all that to stepper controllers.

Does anyone know of a good place to learn about stepper controllers?

What are everyone's thoughts on this?