The other is to mention to the original poster that since his build is rather small- larger than a disk drive size but not big ole CNC router either- he could very likely harvest the carriage assembly from a printer or scanner.  They tend to be really quite good.. attach a drive screw and you are good to go. 

Which brings me to the last idea:  many printers and scanners have both a very solid rail system and a drive method which is often a stepper motor.  It may be worth it to just hack the whole assembly, and use the existing stepper motor.  Printers tend to belt-driven, so the delivered torque might not be as high as a leadscrew-- but he may not any real torque for what he is doing..

Oh man -- this is a useful idea; I do have an inkjet lying around, and this should cut down the time to final build. I was going to go shopping at Home Depot this weekend for the earlier idea of getting the individual rails but postponed it; glad I didn't go (although would probably have been educational to build the thing from scratch).
@focalist: Really appreciate all your input; thanks again.

Hi all, I would like to be able to add serial comms on-board to a couple of my projects instead of using USB converter boards.

Juts been looking at FTDI FT232 IC's but they are not really that cheap of available to me, also have quite a number of pins that I wouldn't need and small pitch for home made PCB's.

What other options are there?

FT230X and FT231X, the latest releases from FTDI, are half the price (bulk quantity) of the FT232, and they offer essentially the same features as far as USB-to-Serial communication is concerned.

@focalist: Motivating to read up on your project. I think I'll try that from-scratch approach -- I'm very new to the whole linear-rails-stepper-motors world, but if you were able to do it with a few tens of dollars, I suppose I have nothing to lose by giving it a shot.

For a crude first-draft, would you say this covers the shopping list?:
--slides (e.g., kitchen-drawer-type)
--threaded rods
--one stepper motor for each threaded-rod/direction
--nails/screws to set everything stable

However, there is still one area which Atmega2560 wins Due despite its higher price. It is lower power consumption.

Is the difference significant? I had read someone remarking the SAM3X8E had pretty low current draw (although this might have been in regard to the sleep current).

Dilution of content is indeed an issue for Arduino community (although less so than many other tech fields).

That said, I think this Stackexchange proposal for an Arduino site will definitely be useful in certain aspects -- Stackexchange emphasizes content creation and curation in a way that is future-reader-friendly. So this will result in more signal-to-noise ratio, community-voted answers, and less redundancy, but also quicker access for any information an Arduino user might be interested in.

Not exactly "household", but if you can get hold of a microscope stage mechanism, and drive it with a stepper, you could probably get sub-millimeter movement.

@cr0sh: Seems very fitting but they are extremely expensive; haven't found one even remotely close to $300

Any alternate ideas for a cheaper solution?

I'm looking for suggestions of something cheap/household-common that already has a motorized moving head (with about 1 mm resolution), or alternately a motorized moving surface, which I could re-use -- just so that I don't have to set up the entire mechanical portion (rails, stepper motors, etc.) for my project from scratch!

The goal is this: I am tinkering with a project that involves several hundred points where I need to drill holes into an object. The holes will be located exactly 1 mm apart.

I want to automate this process using my Arduino to control the timing, iteration, etc.

This could be accomplished by either of the following
--Option A: Move object by 1 mm, Drill hole, Retract drill, Move object by 1 mm, and repeat.
--Option B: Keep object stationary, Move drill by 1 mm, Drill hole, Retract drill, Move drill by 1 mm, and repeat.

Do you have any ideas for some household or purchaseable item that already exists which I could hack or re-purpose into what I want above? Anything below US $300 would work.

PS: My first thought was Disk drives, but those would be too small.

no we order most everything, and in a pinch I take some blank pcb, hit it with a coat of spray paint and send it though the laser engraver

@Osgeld: OK, so then what do you use the mentioned CNC for exactly?

@Osgeld, Do you guys (i.e., at work) presently use the mentioned $1000-desktop CNC for the PCBs? I'd appreciate a reference to the product if you have it please.

Apart from the tape dispensing, which could perhaps be solved, I like @cr0sh's idea of attaching a standard vacuum picker/pen to the CNC spindle. I just don't know if a $1000-desktop CNC would have accuracy of 02.-0.3 mm that is necessary for placing parts.

Assembly of modules is indeed probably the only way.
While the already-existent consumer electronics manufacturers may try to fight this trend, this will still be welcomed by the electronics-parts industry in general because it wouldn't cut down on their sales, it would just distribute or displace part usage into another style of production -- if anything, an even greater number of parts would be purchased.

It would be pretty neat if society headed that way -- Imagine if anyone could create their own custom device for whatever they wish -- for keeping track of temperature in a certain part of their home, or a custom-alarm device, or a device for tracking their infant when it goes out of a certain range, or a fully personalized home-automation system, or an LED-based decoration that's controlled via smartphone, or devices for single-experiment-scientific-research, or devices that teachers can use to demonstrate projectile concepts during a physics class about gravity, etc., etc., etc..

@Zapro: Aha, I've seen your blog before! This article made me remember: http://www.blog.zapro.dk/?p=121

I use Eagle; you seem to have far more and versatile experience than I do; I'm somewhat of a beginner with PCB design -- BTW, your latest project looks pretty fun. I've played with the TLC5940s, but they consumed too much standby current (no sleep pin) for my current project, so I stuck with shift registers.

If you wish, please shoot me a PM with your email, and I'll mail you a couple of boards soon as they're ready!

Small-scale position tracking of individual persons/objects has been one of the big challenges of research across many universities and companies in the last few years --  I'm fascinated by it too but people still haven't arrived at a very consistent/universal/feasible solution.

In your particular case, you could try using a couple of IR cameras (especially if you pull out the Wiimote's camera, since it's well-documented) -- Place an infrared LED on each individual and you'll be able to track them in 3-dimensions. Still has the problem of requiring line-of-sight but at least it will be precise and inexpensive this way.

Good to hear; most of the TFTs I've worked with have been power-hungry.
I'm designing a few PCBs for this, but with an Atmega already on the board (an "LCD-duino" so to speak). Let me know if you're interested in a couple of the blank boards (complimentary).

Do you think there is a possibility that electronic-device-making will also one day slowly evolve into a Home/Individual/Self-manufacturing process, a la 3d printing?

3D printing seems to be one of the big things forecast for 2013-14, and is predicted to slowly but eventually enable small-scale material/physical manufacturing at millions of homes.

So I was discussing with a friend whether the same for electronic devices might ever happen. After all, as is obvious from the diversity of projects described in the Project Guidance thread of the forum, it would appear that there are tens of thousands of diverse custom applications for different individuals -- whereas, there are only a few hundred categories of consumer electronic products that are mass-manufactured out there.

If this kind of customized home self-manufacturing of electronic devices were to materialize, it probably wouldn't happen in the exact same way as 3D printing; at least that's my opinion -- it's hard to imagine everyone having their own PCB-making and pick-and-place machine, not to mention an infinite supply of parts.

However it could work modularly perhaps, e.g., you might order modules and put them together. (I think the Arduino has been a great first step in this direction.) But this type of modularity will have to evolve into a greater number and variety of common, connectable electronic legos, or perhaps there are some clever solutions that can simplify it? Will this ever happen in the next decade or so, or are there inescapable hurdles to this kind of thing that I'm not seeing?

I'm curious about you guys' thoughts.

Very exciting, thank you @cmaglie. I'm looking to check out the repo.
Thanks for starting this whole effort and the thread, @Palliser