Quote Originally Posted by Neale View Post
It's an interesting point, and I wonder if there is a difference between UK and US here. I have no idea where I would go to find a jobbing engineering shop anywhere near me, let alone one with that kind of capacity. My own machine top rails are roughly 1.8m long, 1m separation, on a floor-mounted machine. It would be great to have had that machined but like most (UK) folks on this forum, I ended up with an epoxy bed instead. My background is IT so I have very few contacts in the engineering world - I wonder if anyone else knows how likely/easy it would be to find machining capacity like that, available at an acceptable cost, in the UK?
I am sure regional differences apply, and not just between countries. Where I live and work, there are over 800 CNC machine shops within a 50 mile radius of where I live. I also have colleagues elsewhere in the country that have to travel 500 miles in order to reach fewer shops. I am sure there are hot spots in the UK for manufacturing.