Thank you everyone for all the positive feedback I have received after being interviewed on NPR’s Science Friday!
Eddie, the curious cat, was my shadow throughout the entire build and constantly jumped up in front of whatever I was working on. Luckily he was not interested in the machine itself, so I did not have to worry about locking him out of the room while it was running. He absolutely loves playing with ABS plastic filament though, and that can be counter productive when you are trying to untangle a 5 pound reel of plastic :)
Testing of the Z axis by itself went well as expected. The bipolar stepper motor had no problem lifting the stage up and down at a leisurely 300mm/s. It is much slower (1/3) than the X and Y axes, but that is just fine. With its 3/8″-12 single start ACME lead screw we get a high resolution in order to achieve those 0.425mm layer heights.