Answers as folliows;
1. Do a "CNC retrofit" search on Google. You'll see tons of adventures and even more ideas as it pertains to DIY CNC. You're sort of asking "what's the best one to use???" and that answer is going to vary according to what you want to do, who you talk to and how much $$$ you want to spend.
2. See #1 above. You first have to decide stepper or servo and then choose software accordingly. For your situation, steppers would me quite adequate.
3. I"d be inclined to consider 1 source. Dealing with incompatibility issues can get ugly when the software guy blames the control card guy who blames the servo/stepper guy who blames the software.
Don't forget the O/S isssue (win vs dos vs linux et al). Turns into a real cluster when you try to get all the stuff to talk to each other. I"m looking at Ajax/CNC but there are others (I need a plug and play and don't have time to deal with a science project). YOu could use Mach (whatever) as it drives steppers easily and is quite economical.
IIF IT IS A JOB (IE: occupation), go 1 source as you have to make a living and can't mess around, If it is a hobby, pick your poison.
4. In a crude word, yes with steppers. Can use a 555 IC to create step pulses at whatever rate you want. You can use a simple toggle switch to switch from CW to CCW in direction. Crude but effective.
IF you add some Red Lion counters (they have application notes that may show how to do bidirection counting via the step pulse) you can simultaneously drive the counters for crude distance quantification (IE; crude DRO).
In a word, what you WANT to do IS QUITE possible IF you know how to do some elementary circuit design and electromechnanical system integration....  |