Motor Controller
We used an Arduino Mega with a ramps 1.4 and motor drivers as our motor control system. We based this decision on after seeing many other projects online drive numerous stepper motors using the Arduino Mega. There were also a lot of libraries that we had easy access to that we could modify to make our project work quicker. The actual stepper motor drivers used were a4988. These are powerful stepper motor drivers that can change their current output to the stepper motor so we can control multiple stepper motors but need to do the same action from one chip. The drivers were also was compatible with our libraries and our motor driver shield on Arduino Mega. Our Shield was also integrated with power supply but a USB cable plugged in the Mega so that we could send G-code to run cuts.Stepper Motors
The stepper motors we chose were commonly used stepper motors that can provide enough torque to move the carriage system (which would be pretty heavy because there was another motor attached to it) in the gantry system. It also direct drove the base plate.