After a whole lot of messing around with my Smoothieboard controller, I decided to give up on it. I had flashed the firmware, tried everything I could find to get it properly configured, and it just kept losing steps in the X and Y directions. I had done a bunch of troubleshooting and determined that when moving in a single axis, it was fine. However, whenever it tried to run the X- and Y-axis at the same time, it would lose steps in both directions. My internet research leads me to believe that my 2.0A stepper motors (single motor on X and dual motors on Y) are just too much for the board without external controllers. This is frustrating, because I know other people have working OX CNC machines with nearly identical specifications. But onward and upward.
So, I purchased a TinyG controller board. The configuration is a LOT more friendly and straightforward than the Smoothie configuration, and I had it up and running successfully after a couple of hours of rewiring and configuration. I am happy to report that my CNC machine no longer loses steps (yay!) and I was able to run a few jobs in foam with no problem!
My kids were interested in seeing if the machine would work, so I cut out something fun for my first trial run – Minions!!