This familiar footprint manages to contain everything you need for a three-axis machine. The purple boards slotted into the pairs of SIL headers are Pololu Stepper motor drivers. Going this route ...

Thankfully, it’s possible to score an Arduino shield that does the heavy lifting ... consisting of two-tone laser etched parts that snap together to give a rather sleek finished look.

The motors are paired with three other main components: an off-the-shelf 250 mW laser module, an Arduino Uno, and an ...