Homebrew PCBs

Hi
  This is going to sound a little OT.  I've gutted a Epson 400 and a 
scanner with 2 guide rods.  I'm putting the print head and drive 
mechanism on top of the scanner motions system.  I'm doing this to make 
a flat bed printer - like a flat bed scanner.  Since I'm working on a 
system that prints onto boards to make PCBs, I'm hoping this is not to 
OT.  The hitch I'm hitting is finding gears, axles for the gears, and a 
belt drive system for the X axis so that I can change the paper drive 
system to moving the head/head movement system.  The paper drive uses a 
stepper that worked through 3 gears down to driving the paper roller.  I 
don't have the gear ratio yet.  My eyes started crossing before I was 
done counting ;).  The problem is the final gear (that is on the 
roller), which has an I.D. of about 5/8",  way off of  anything I can 
use for an axle.  I searched around for "small gears" and "robot gears" 
on vivisimo, but the stores I found did not have much of a selection of 
gears, and no timing belts of the right size (I need about a 26" timing 
belt).
  I'd appreciate it if anyone has any info on where to get these 
components.  
  Also, I'm using the printers X axis (paper roller control system) for 
easy interfacing.  In effect the printer electronics won't know there is 
any change.  I'm not real happy with using a belt drive, since it will 
stretch, and the print head & drive (Y axis) mechanism have a bit of 
mass.  This is going to be slammed around every time the printer moves 
the head down a line, but I have to be able to intervene when I get to 
the bottom, I need to grab the head and move it back to the top whenever 
the printer does a page feed.  I want to do this by having a mechanism 
that essentially unhooks the normal drive servo system and moves the 
head back when it detects that the printer is form feeding, then 
unblocks the optical sensor that checks when the paper feed hardware has 
done a complete cycle and unblocks the paper present switch.
  If anyone has any ideas about a way to get around using a belt, I'd 
appreciate that to, or an idea for which newsgroups to search.  I looked 
for the 2 member epson_400_and_optics_9600_pcb_printing group but 
couldn't find it ;).
Richard