10.5 x 25 cnc plasma table retrofit

why baking and sodium hydroxide that is cheaper and it is more alkaline?

Very cheap and very easy to find, and it works fine, for a long time.

I loaded the table up with as much baking soda as we could buy from walgreens. Man did they give me a funny look when I bought them out of baking soda.... My freind came by and dropped off the motors all brand new. He says next month they may have some larger brother motors coming in close to a 1000w he thinks. These ones are 120w with a 20-1 gear ratio. Brushless stepper motors. What do you guys think, do you think its enough to power the gantry two of them for the Y direction? or should I hold off and wait for the larger motors or buy some new ones. I dont need crazy rapid speeds but being able to cut 16 g would be nice. 

         

The first issue I run into is that my gear track is 5 TPI The shaft diameter to the motor is 18mm does anyone build gears with metric bores and imperial gear pitch? buy a 5/8 bore pinion chuck it up in the lathe and bore it out to 18mm? hand file to broach out the keyway? a 20 T pinion should get me to about 600 ipm if my calculations are correct. which is honestly to fast but I am worried a 10t will not have enough contact and skip or slop.

Upon further investigation I think these motors do not have the ability to speed control at the precision required. They are more for like a conveyor system pre set the speed and let er rip or control it with a potentiometer. I think they could still be very useful for projects around the shop maybe to power a few bridge Cranes that don't roll as nicely as they should anymore. 

Those motors do not seem to have encoders at all, so will not do for CNC control as you found out and i am late to point out.
You can try adding encoders as the lid is easy to open, but i fear it might be way to much work to attach them due to short shaft and limited space.
Might be possible using those magnetic encoders as they are simply glued to the shaft, so only drilling a hole for it and for the electronic on the lid, but i never used them so i have no idea how good and reliable they are.