Category: Driver Boards
Can anyone point to the product I'm looking for? Or tell me (nicely
what I should be looking for instead?
That is a very nice way of asking, thank you.
Take a picture of the insides of the electric/control box and upload it here, we need to know what is there to be able to tell you what next.
In general, get the so called "TB6600" drives that use the TB67S109 chip (cheaper and smaller box), they are very good and usually under 10$ a piece, then get an old PC with parallel port, preferably Dell OptiPlex 980 in the big tower case as it has a built in parallel port, and a DB25 to DC25 or Centronics cable, cut one side, strip down some 15CM, use multimeter to find the pins 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and wire those to the drives. Add a power supply for the drives, be it from old PC or even better laptop adapter or just cram the drives inside the PC case (plenty of room there) and use it's power supply 12V rail. That is it, for under 100$ you have a very reliable CNC machine controller.
Be warned that it will be limited in speed, though, depending on drive voltage and microstepping set on the drives, but it will work for years without issues.
You can add a Mesa to that setup whenever you want...