Three or four years ago I bought an early release Darkly Labs "Emblaser" laser cutter and worked it to death. I went way outside the boundaries of laser cutting at that time and kept Damian, Darkly Labs Founder, up to date with what I was discovering. When it finally wore out I asked him to go over it and give it a birthday. Short story is that he replaced it with his latest release "Core" laser cutter and threw in a MakerBot 3d printer. Thus began my introduction to stepper motors. I have three Nema 17s because somebody gave them to me. I thought they would be the bees knees to drive my crane. I kow nothing about almost everything to do with electronics but am willing to go down any path that looks better than stepper motors. I have 2 L2989N boards because I was going to try to learn how to drive dc motors with Arduino. I muck around with scratchbuilt rc boats so I know that dc motors with gearboxes are cheap as buggery and am certainly willing to have a go at that if you reckon it would be better.