I finally bit the bullet and bought a Harbor Freight X2 mill.
I will buy the cncfusion motor mount kit with ballscrews.
Now, I am contemplating on buying a Gecko g540 kit (I will only need 3 axis to start, but would later on want to add a 4&5th axis table, how would I then connect the 5th axis seeing that I only have 1 parallel port which is connected to the 4 axis G540?
Get another port (card is low cost), save some pins on the limits or easier still get a smooth stepper.
Dunno how that fits with the g540 kit. Check out compatibility first.
Do you have or are you going to buy CADCAM that supports 4 & 5 axis machining - that maybe your first stumbling block - 10's of thousands of $:eek:
The Gecko only has outputs for 4 axis, as you know.. The gecko also acts as the breakout board for your 4 axis system.. To add a 5th axis, you'll need another parallel port (PCI card, or better yet a smoothstepper), a breakout board and a driver for the 5th axis. Of course you can also use the 2nd breakout board to expand your inputs and outputs!