I used a little 28BYJ-48 stepper motor with a printed linear slide to fashion a light-weight Z-axis for a laser engraver I was once playing with. It employed a simple bipolar hack that greatly increases the torque of the little stepper and enables it to be used with A4988/DRV8825 stepstick drivers (please forgive… I’m hard of hearing and forgot to turn down the loud TV)…
Check out the videos from the Thingiverse page for the linear slider. Converted to bipolar, the motor is capable of far more torque than unipolar and can be driven from a Ramps with A4988 or DRV8825 drivers, just like our beloved NEMA17’s. To set it up, simply take off all the micro-stepping jumpers (the motor is geared way down) and turn down the Vrefs… the motor can only handle 150 ma or so. Then go into the firmware and set the steps/mm setting to a value that moves it the distance required (I use this procedure to determine the proper steps/mm setting). Please recognize precision is NOT the little motor’s forte… but it’s more than good enough for applications like the above.