Quote Originally Posted by El$syd View Post
If a hobby mill costs £3-7K (KX1/3 at £3-4K, Syil at £3-4K+, Tormach at £5-7K, home made £2K+) then £375 price for a CAM package would not be an unreasonable cost.
I'm not sure about buying a CNC mill, but I think £2k+ is a bit much for a CNC mill.

I got my milling machine second hand for £320 (new £800 ish). Stepper motors and drivers cost £266. Transformer etc <£30. That's £616.
Granted I didn't buy ballscrews, but even with that it's probably less than £800.

For me spending £375 on a CAM package just isn't happening. So far I've got along fine with a)writing gcode manually, b)writing my own programs (pulleys, wind turbine blades), c) cambam free edition and using the denford QuickCAM pro at school every so often.

You can do a lot with the cambam free edition with a bit of effort. Using that and CNCtoolkit and you'll be able to do most things. Turbine blades too....