I'm designing a laser cutter/engraver. My expertise is in electronics not mechanical engineering but I have seen several homebuilt designs using each of the methods to drive the system. Already have the laser(s) sorted out with a 15w CO2 and a 75w ND:YAG but burning stuff indiscriminately is only fun for so long!
Most laser cutters seem to use a belt drive pulley system but this seems to me to require higher torque steppers and have a fixed resolution related to the steppers resolution. The gantry carrying a mirror is certainly much less weight to slew around than a router. However, I would like to build a system that may have the top gantry mount replaced with some additional components to do routing as well.
Wouldn't a leadscrew system be more capable of doing both. Also your steppers would have increased resolution depending on the TPI you pick for your leadscrews? Depending on the TPI you could trade off speed for resolution. Maybe even different rates for each axis?
Any advice from those who have built their own systems is welcomed.