Hi, I've been planning on building a CNC machine for years and I finally think I'm starting to get the time and space to do it. My primary hobby is woodworking so the machine will mostly be working with wood but reading a few posts here I'm starting to get interested in machining some aluminium. My plan had been to build my machine mostly out of MDF but seeing the aluminium profiles a lot of people are using I'm starting to change my mind.

By day I own and run a small business that develops forecasting software which is a fancy way of saying I'm a software developer. I've got a some CAD experience mostly with SketchUp and 3D Studio although I have also had a play with AutoCAD. I've not yet had a tinker with any CAM software so that should be an interesting bit of research. Mechanically I have no formal training but I've built no end of things over the years. A couple of years ago I built my own bench mounted belt sander which I use a fair bit (even if the belt doesn't run quite true ).