Quote Originally Posted by Bucks View Post
Hope this doesn't confuse things but I'm Mr Jacks lol

Would the laptop be ok, if we disable the power saving functions & had it plugged into the mains rather than battery power?

Price isn't set in stone Ideally looking to spend £500 to £1000, certainly not thousands though.
Mr Jacks what work area size do you need ?
Laptops are ok with parallel ports but some wont drive the mach3 software at the right frequency so you can download a program to your laptop that should fix the issue, just set the program to run at start up and you wont need to start it each time, its called rightmark cpu. just check the "run HLT command when os is idle" box under management that should be the only setting you need to make

Chinese machines like the 3020 or 3040 and 6040 are good machines some may have loose bearings but there around 25 pd for a pair of x axis bearings if you need them. Again work area size is whats important just make sure whatever you buy or build you can fit your work piece