The little Eleksmaker boards are pretty good quality boards IMO and I’ve bought several of them… both 2- and 3-axis. I also have a couple of 2.5 watt Eleksmaker laser modules… so the hookup then becomes quite straight-forward. There are no provisions for endstops on the controller boards… but I never use them anyway, so don’t miss them.
I’ve also become a fan of series connecting stepper motors (ala MPCNC) for the small machines I do… and fashioning a little harness from Dupont jumper wires to connect two motors isn’t difficult at all. Therefore, I really don’t pay much attention to which axis on the controller board might have the doubled-up connectors… I only need one per axis anyway.
I’ve got several of the inexpensive Nano-based controllers… including a couple of KeyeStudio boards. They’re pretty nice but also pretty basic and don’t bring out the laser and servo connections to board’s edge as the Eleksmaker boards do. But I am a fan of Grbl and the little inexpensive Nano-based controllers generally perform quite nicely… and they’re so easy to use.
I ordered the GT2 closed loop belts but didn’t study the info enough to see what all bearings and gaskets might also be needed. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess… and either make do with something I’ve already got or just bite the bullet and wait for an order to arrive.
I’m not sure about the tangential cutter… I’ve never built or used one so have zero experience.
I make my needles from 0.025" piano-wire… and a package of the K&S Engineering 36" lengths will make a lot of needles. There’s no problem with the straightness or strength… way back when, I torture-tested my cutters by cutting cardboard and even coroplast. They held up surprisingly well to the abuse. If properly sharpened to a conical point (like a sharpened wooden pencil) and appropriate feeds/speeds are used, foamboard offers little resistance to it. I’ve never measured it but there is a gigantic amount of force concentrated on the tip of that needle… so watch your fingers. It cuts equally well in all directions and leaves little/no debris in its wake… i.e. it punctures and displaces the material (like a rapier) rather than blowing it out (like a bullet); i.e. think “exit wounds” 
The “rolling plotter/needle-cutter” should be a fun build… when I can get to it. Right now I’m trying to help SIL with his children’s theater decorations and massive foam props at his church… and trying to learn how to CAM for and use the TimSavX2 hot-wire machine I built for the task. It’s basically two “identical”, near-stock, TimSav machines, standing on edge, side-by-side, with both axes slaved together, and a length of heated nichrome wire stretched between… and it uses the series-connected motors and that same little 2-axis Eleksmaker controller discussed above.
– David