The mechanical build is complete on the test rig,

The mechanical build is complete on the test rig, just a matter of creating the modular wiring for the different controllers, have all the controllers now, will be able to test with Smoothieboard, Arduino/Ramps, and GRBL.

Hardly waiting to see that !!

I will be posting some pictures of the build very soon.

If you are going to have it modular I would love to see a video comparison of a simple design

Ask and ye shall receive.Once I get the wiring figured out I will gladly post a video.

Sounds good. Since I am saying I will be ordering a smoothie board in the next few weeks I am trying to figure out what I need.

The wiring is actually not that hard to make modular, I am using DB25 breakout boards, and just swapping the cable to the desired controller.

That seems to bee a really good idea. You could easily move the controller to different pieces of equipment with consistent layouts.

Maybe I should not have thrown out all of those old computer cables. Nah, I should have. I would have a storage building the size of my house and not been able to find a thing if I had kept all of that stuff. But I really like that approach.

Are you replacing the flat cable or using the middleman board? Or did you layout a custom board to cover all of the k40 including the middleman connection with the DB25 on it?

I was looking at it as a one time build but it would be cleaner and easier for others with a complete middleman designed board.

I used a middleman board on my K40, but this is for the CNC router that will be used to test LaserWeb, I have a 6.5W laser diode as well as a 1.5KW water cooled spindle for the cnc part of laserweb.