Just learned about a great device called a "Biaxial Stepper Motor." It's a pair of stepper motors driving two separate shafts that are nested concentrically inside of each other. This allows you to mount two indicator needles, one on each shaft, and operate them independently.
It functions something like the shafts that move the hands of a clock, but with one very important difference.
In a clock, all the shafts are linked by gears and they rotate with a
set ratio (for example: the hour hand moves 1/12th of a rotation for every
full rotation of the minute hand). Wikipedia calls the gearing mechanism a "wheel train" (note the illustration) with the "hand shafts" being the part attached to and moving the hands.
By contrast, the two shafts of a biaxial stepper operate completely independently, so you can
