Small Powered Winch

This is a first attempt at a computer controlled, stepper motor driven, powered winch. Like the winch design it is based on, there are ball bearing races on the base around the spindle (both red), on the spindle itself (with break away support structures) and on the underside of the screw on cap (green). These are filled with 6mm (not 2mm) ball bearings to provide a smooth support for the reel (blue). The reel is turned by the drive gear (yellow) which is attached to the shaft of the stepper motor which is mounted up through the bottom of the base. The current stepper size is NEMA23, but the unit can be scaled up for larger drive.
There are many possible uses including running a "zip line" for a ghost that is raised and lowered with a semi-random pattern, or any other light weight object that needs to be raised and lowered automatically. I want to use three of them to make a "flying" area robot like the "SkyCam".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skycam
This was inspired by the "Wi