cnc mill project

First, thanks for the info regarding Gecko drives, I found it very useful. My friend and I are industrial engineers at U of I and are converting a manual Taig micromill to CNC as part of an independent study in adaptive control systems. We currently in the very beginning stages of the project and are trying to figure out what components to purchase for the initial conversion. I have a pretty broad background in machine tool systems, in addition to being a metalsmith, but I don't know all that much about CNC interfacing. We'd like the machine to be both accurate and cheap. We've decided to use the Gecko drivers for the project, as I've seen them on numerous websites and all have spoken very highly about them. I was wondering if anyone has suggestions for the type of servos we should use, particularly: typical ranges for continuous torque, speed, voltage, and encoder resolution (we plan on using rotary encoders). We're also interested on upper bounds of the same parameters (i.e. the maximum values that are worth paying for). If anyone knows of a cheap surplus servo supplier we'd be interested in that too Thanks a lot.

-John


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