Custom motorized stereotax from Mark O. West’s lab at Rutgers

They motorized a Kopf manipulator and used CNC software to control it. I like the simple mechanics. Here’s one of the parts used to couple the stepper motors to the manipulator:

They use a standard 3-axis CNC stepper driver board.

They have some of their own software, to simplify the interface:

They have a JoVE article. They also have a web site, which has the machine drawings, software, parts list, and other resources (where the figures in this post came from).

I wouldn’t be surprised if this could be put together rather quickly. Drop the part drawings off at your machine shop, order the other parts online, and then in a couple of weeks once everything is in, spend a day assembling it and working out the software. It’s a nicely documented build.

(Hat tip to ITS)