Geckos. 201 or 210?

Hello,

I'm considering replacing the heap of junk that is laughingly called a controller on the lathe. It's memory depends on whether or not the control goes insane when it finishes the program and I'm beyond tired with messing around on the RS232 and magnetic tape front. I don't understand which controller would be best though. I've kind of ignored the stepper world unipolar ones. Dan's is a possibility, but the Geckos look good. Which would be more of an advantage, the 201 or 210? Here is what I'm looking at:

A Denford lathe with roughly 12cm from spindle to bed
Something like ~40 - 45cm between centres with a 1/3 - 1/2hp motor (Can be made up to 1hp on commercial version)
The cross slide has 9cm travel and the carridge moves around 40cm on ballscrews. Rapids are a massive 1220mm per minute.
I'm looking to machine brass and aluminium be mainly high grade stainless steels. I don't know how big the motors are but they must be over 150 easily, they don't budge with me leaning into them as hard as I can. They are steppers needless to say.

I am hoping I will be able to salvage the power supply etc from the control if I take it apart so I don't need to spend too much getting it all back together again. Which one does what? Also, why do Gecko prefer unregulated supplies? Lastly, is Mariss the designer and producer of Geckos?

Thanks,
John


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