Thanks guys, the wealth of knowledge on here is great.
My cnc is going to be 100cm x 75cm c beam construction. I intend to cut wood, acrylic and some aluminium with it. At this stage, the aluminium cutting will be to cut bulking blocks for the stickmaking world. Anything else will be ideas that come into my head at a later date.
As stated it will be run by nema 23's 425 oz 3amp motors x4 with8mm threaded rod. I can't say it's going to have a hard life, but that's just my thoughts at the moment. Once built and working, my thoughts and practices may change.
I plan to use a MacBook as my computer for the cnc. This I think will necessitate using a USB breakout board. Are there any particular boards suited to the USB side of things and as I'm heading for USB, was looking at chilli pepper as opposed to Mach 3/4.

Thanks
Mick