Thinking of buying one of these little things

[HankMcSpank]

To be clear ...what I'm saying is that not everyone wants to mill steel, or even mill aluminium ( plenty of folk just want to mill acrylic, wood or make pcbs etc.)

Also not everyone wants to make this a lifestyle (most come to the genre because they need a CNC machine, not just wanting to fill a bit of time in)

Therefore if your CNC needs are modest... I'm just saying that buying a reasonably spec'ed secondhand machine is a viable option ....I'm doing fine pitch SMD pcbs & have zero accuracy problems - but then again don't ask me to mill a aluminium spindle bracket (even though my machine probably could - slowly!) .... I didn't buy my machine for that.

Like I say...it depends on what your ultimate goal is......new users coming to the forum might get deflated at the constant barrage of diss'ing of anything but the most highly spec'ed of machines. Coming back to the first video that inspired me about the possibilities of a simple CNC machine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6drMZqmyXQc ) .....of course, it a very very basic machine, but if you're only after very very basic pcb, it may be the gateway to getting into CNC'ing (i.e. where a person - when faced with the cost of going 'pucka' - might have walked away otherwise)

One man's 'crap' is another man's 'perfection' ...we're all different, with different levels of expectations, budgets & timeframes.

the CNC machine you buy as your first machine, needn't be 'for life' ...there's an incredibly healthy market for secondhand machines, so the losses incurred by buying secondhand & then selling on secondhand are minimal....if I had my time again, I'd have bypassed all the heartache & just bought one.

[JAZZCNC]

if I had my time again, I'd have bypassed all the heartache & just bought one.[/COLOR]

The reason you had heartache in the first place is due to buying crap and penny pinching.!! . . . Simple truth is that if you want a decent machine it costs a certain amount of money to do it right. Trying to build on the cheap is false economy with same outcome every time.!! . . . Heartache.