I am working on building a 3-axis CNC router I designed to replace my wimpy Shapeoko2 machine.

The Shapeoko2 uses 60 oz-in Nema17's and an Arduino / Grblshield for control. The new machine is much beefier, and I was thinking of using 269 oz-in Nema 23's, possibly larger but I won't be able to fit long motors on the Y axis without modifying it.

Here's a picture of the new machine.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/XgaoUboSrFF52m9m2
The X axis is 3x6-inch extrusion, has 20mm linear bearings all-around, and the Y axis is dual-driven. X uses 1/2-10 5-start leadscrew, Y and Z use 3/8-8 4-start leadscrew. (All leadscrew is 1/2" per rev.)

I am having trouble deciding on what electronics to drive it. Preliminarily I was going to use an Ethernet Smoothstepper (but which BOB?) with 4x DQ542MA drivers and 269 oz-in motors everywhere. I would like to use Mach3/4. Are these a good choice? I am also looking at the Gecko g540, however at some point I would like to add a 4th axis, and since the gecko's 4 outputs will be taken up because of the dual-driven Y axis, that would be more difficult to accomplish. I guess I don't really know what else is out there that I should be looking at. Help?

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