Hood steppers suitable for this mill work out at about £40 each.
i have used Arc's drives and found them to be OK.
In fact I had an upset the other week and managed to clear a problem up I had had for a while with some Gecko 210's.
I crashed my Z axis one Sunday, my fault, right tool, wrong offset and hit the vise jaws with a 20mm end mill. Not a hard smash, the jaws will clean up at 20 to 30 thou and the cutter took a light regrind to get back to standard but it took the Z drive Gecko out.
Full blown burn out, all Mosfets fried and didn't blow the fuse.
Fortunately had a new drive and fitted it, ran rest of Sunday and all day Monday, switched of Monday night OK.
Switched on Tuesday Morning and no Z drive again, can't see a problem inside the drive but it's dead, again fuse OK.
Had a spare Arc drive so swapped the micro steps to 8 from 10 and fitted it. ran two air test runs and put it to work.
Now since converting to Gecko drives the Z has lost steps on programs with many short Z moved like canned cycle drilling.
After 1400 odd hoes I can be up to 12 thou out, not a real problem as they are all thru holes but annoying.
Tried all sorts of help, leading edge, trailimg edge, pulse width, pulse space etc, etc, from Ian Eagland at Ahha and Mariss at Gecko but still lost steps.
When I swapped to the Arc drive this problem disappeared without doing anything.
On the X3 I have just converted I have used the C11G breakout board from Arturo Duncan at
http://www.cnc4pc.comThis is a nice board as it has the relays on board, charge pump and can run the spindle via a VFD or even a DC speed board.
John S.