Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.
I've lost interest in the smoothstepper, a little behind the times from what I've been reading. The Pokey stuff seems interesting and updated frequently. Arturo from CNC4PC suggested them and says they will do the index pulse homing and do threading based on the servo's own encoder on z, not sure how that works if I'm not using an encoder on the spindle or maybe he assumed I was and this was just a way to improve timing. PLUS the Pokeys has it's own proprietary PLC built in that I can use to program the tool changer. Not ladder logic though, which sucks.
Also from smoothstepper forum they said those servos would work. I want to stay with AC so I don't have to have a separate power supply, if that's required, never worked with servo's before assume a DC one would need a PS.