Thanks Clive. I took your advice and have been reading the building logs over the last 4 days. I must say, I'm hugely impressed with quality of the DIY builds and the generosity of the folk on the forum with helping one another out with advice.

It's a steep learning curve and there's a lot of information to digest, but I think I'll do a bit more homework and start a build log. I've got a few concerns - namely how to accurately cut and machine aluminium parts (e.g. gantry end plates) when I don't have a CNC, and the electronics side of things is pretty baffling at the moment, but maybe I could do it. It would be a case of 'standing on the shoulders of giants' in order to see though!

Cheers

Chris