I decided on direct drive with mine on the X2 with 425oz/in steppers on 1204 screws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-7kHfSkT9Y
It's been running a while but has a few snagging areas that still need finishing. Had some changes done since the vid.
It's a bit of a bodge but I'd never worked with metal before and wanted to do the experiment to see if I could do it.
It works quite well for my needs and backlash is really minimal at 0.003mm.
My next build on an AMAT25LV (similar to the G0704) will hopefully be much nicer. Not in stock until t least mid October though
It's set up with dip switches at 1600 per rev and 400 steps per unit. Gives it 0.0025mm per step.
They are plenty strong enough, you can't go that fast with the 350w version X2 machine anyway. I've got rapids running 1200mm/min and the fastest I'm cutting is 700mm/min with a 6mm cutter at a DOC of 1mm. Any deeper or faster and it really struggles or overloads the spindle motor.
The 2 red lever valves to the rear right of the head are because I had to divert most of the coolant straight back into the container. There was so much pressure when it was first installed it was too much for the nozzles so needed calming down. Turns out that the diverting valve is fully open and the valve to the nozzles is open only just! A 350w pump was a bit much but blasts the chips away
I've made some new parts for it so I can change down to 8mm tubing rather than the 13mm yellow ones in the images. Want to thin it all out to make it tidier and maybe add another 2 lines.