I home brewed my setup. Following are some of the details of what I started with:

Here are the sources for the conversion I did.

Stepper motors and power supply
Herbach & Rademan They have a nice selection of steppers, but they don't seem to refer to them by the NEMA
size. I would suggest you call them and request a catalog to see what they have. Good service and very reasonable prices.
I have since changed the steppers to some 550 in/oz 5 amp units I got from San Diego Motion  I truthfully
think the 250 in/oz units I started with are usable, but the "Tim the toolman" urge got the better of me and I went for more power to get faster rapids and reduce my cycle times.

Controller
Camtronics I am using the 5 amp unit. The quality of his circuit boards are tremendous and all of the components are
top notch. The instructions leave a little to be desired, but Dan is pretty good about answering questions. I have also heard good reports about his 2
amp unit, but I wanted to have the capacity to run the larger motors so I went to the 5 amp unit.

Interpreter software
DesKam  I started using the DOS version of DeskNC. I also have the Win95 version, but have not yet used it. According to Dan at Camtronics, the Win95 version is a little flaky, but he recommends the DOS version.
EMC I have now moved to the Enhanced Machine Controller written by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This is a free program (your tax dollars at work) that has a very full feature set and runs on a real time build of Linux. I would suggest starting with a program like DeskNC to learn about CNC, but you should consider EMC once you get everything working and start looking for more features. There is a new integrated Linux install with EMC now available that makes EMC about as easy to get installed and running as working with Win9X. It is refered to as the BDI (Brain Dead Install). I would recommend getting this disk and not messing with a separate Linux install, kernel upgrade, and then EMC install unless you are already a Linux expert. Information on the BDI and support for EMC is available at: www.linuxcnc.org

CAD/CAM package
Vector I went with Vector 7.0. It is a quite impressive program for the money. Don't let the price list scare you off as
they sell the complete package with all features for $795.00 (last I checked as of June 1999). There are often special discounts on Vector and other IMService software available to the members of the CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO list. See the previous page for information on how to join this great CNC resource.