I've heard a few complaints about steppers skipping steps ..... is there anything like a step sensor you can place on the motor to confirm that it actually responds to the applied steps? The end goal would be to issue a warning if the motor fails to turn the specified amount, then the user can decide whether to continue or reset everything.

I'm looking into getting a small CNC machine, and was wondering if there's any advantage to EMC (not sure which machines can utilize this, it seems like so many are captives of some proprietary software). Can Tormach run EMC? Are there any negatives to running EMC?