Hello. I run my own one man band company, I design and make small volumes of electronics or have the boards made out where quantities permit (above 25).

Most of what I do needs to go into a box of some kind that invariably needs holes cutting. Machinists ans box manufacturers have long lead times and of course want tooling lcharges. So I'm figuring that if I get a small CNC myself I can have the benefit of production quality sam[les and prototypes and small quantities are viable. for example I have a project currently where i need to make 50 and tooling is £95+ VAT yet each box is only 80p to machine and I'd have to wait 7 weeks.

I have set my eyes on a Proxxon FF 500 / BL-CNC machine which also cmes in a manual version. CNC is £3663 + VAT and the manual one is £1392 + VAT, so they want around £2200 for motors, controller and I guess the biggest cost is software.

My question is, is this a good starting point ? It seems a reasonable amount of money although that is mighty expensive software.

Should I consider any other options ? is there open source software worth considering ? (there is some question as to wheather the machine comes with software).