5k sounds reasonable to me, thanks for the break down Jazz, that's helpful and exactly what I needed, a ballpark figure ... have you seen CKJCNC on eBay? They seem to be doing a lot of business selling CNC machines, sub 10k plus VAT for the 1325 model (1300 x 2500 x 200 working area). Certainly looks the part, at least to my untrained eye! About 11.5k inc VAT.