I'm fully aware that $500 drive I found probably cost millions in R&D to get to where it is. That is probably why drive prices are high, same with axial flux motors, drives go for $5000. The more advanced the tech the harder to control it. My biggest misconception is also probably that there is a major difference of making the linear motor work and making it work good enough for machining.

by the way I wasn't thinking of selling them. I wanted to open source everything so that anyone can make them, both the hardware and the gerber files. forcers and stators made with sheet metal cutting primarily(fiber/laser/waterjet) and ideally a board that you can just upload the gerber to pcbway and have them fully assemble it. At the very least I'll try to make the first step with the forcer/stator and maybe someone smarter will pick it up in the future to further improve it.