I was at a friends shop and he showed me his CNC mill. It is a servo driven system with the position feedback coming from linear DRO scales not from an encoder on the servo motors. The surprising thing to me was that the X & Y axis were driven with ACME lead screws not ball screws. The backlash was eliminated because it was inside the feedback loop.

This system worked beautifully. Could that same system be put together using Stepper motors instead of Servos using the DRO position signals to the Stepper controller?

Thanks for your help,

Gridley