Hello all. Was recommended to join by chaps on another forum when I asked there about CNC routers. I've lurked for a couple of weeks, sometimes boggling at the sheer amount of useful advice here and then being bemused by the way some guys rip into every CNC maker that dares show his face here. :)

Background: the machine will take on some of the work I send out of house and also allow me to do some new products and prototyping that is annoyingly time consuming. It won't be a 5-days-a-week 8-hours-a-day production setup. More likely to be 2-3 hours every few days.

Materials: PTFE in 3mm sheet, acrylic/polycarbonate in 1-5mm sheet, occasional aluminium in 0.6-2mm sheet (perhaps dibond, too), and very rarely there will be some ply in 3-12mm sheet.

Budget: £5000 maximum, preferably closer to £3000.

Being such a newb, and shocked at the depth of criticism here for so many UK CNC router makers in the price bracket that I'm considering, I was minded to buy something like the Stepcraft, use that for the simplest material and get to understand the limitations. Then sell it and get a machine that solves those problems before working on the more demanding stuff.