Hi Bob
Just discovered your thread. Good to see you making progress and that is going to be one fine looking machine. I like you choice of materials.
As we have discussed freight from me to you makes it expensive to help out so all I can offer is moral support or cheeky remarks if you get too cocky.
Dingo745
I am in Perth and have the same problems as you having to source everything from overseas. You get used to the freight and it is still cheaper than buying in Australia.
It is usual to go through the indecisions of which way to go with a build. I have build four CNC machines for myself and have had a hand in five others and I still never know at the start what the end will be.
If it is any help Xylotex boards are on three of my machines and the other one was made by a local engineer and uses the same chips as the Xylotex board. I am running 269oz motors on my three gantry routers and 497oz motors on my little mill. I can't fault the boards and have run jobs with more than 250,000 lines of code that take almost 4 hours to run.
Two of my machines are steel base and aluminum gantry construction so it sounds similar to what you have in mind.
I am just sharing my experience and not suggesting you should get Xylotex. My choice for Xylotex was based on the ability of the board to drive the motors and price.
cheers,
Rod
Perth, Western Australia