Thanks, that's very much where I'm going. I don't have a lathe/mill so I'm tied to getting the bed parts already made (accurately I hope?). The rest as you say is like Meccano. What amazes me (because I'm green) is most of the Chinese stuff is pushing Mach3 ripoffs, parallel port PC control and Windows 32 bit. Support for XP is pretty much dead now, PC Motherboards don't come with parallel ports, usb port emulators don't always work and 32 bit is just about still around for now ( I use 32/64 Win7).

My PCB CAD can output G-code files, so I'll be looking for a simple interface, I may even consider open source Linux or Arduino - it's always the usb drivers or lack of them that frustrate platform compatibility. E.g I have a good A3 printer but no 64 bit usb driver. I saw a Chinese machine with a simple controller display that read CNC files direct from an SD card which would make it pretty future proof. I assume the spindle motor and drive have their own manual controller and it's XYZ(A) that needs the thought and software interfaces?

Now I've introduced myself and and set the scene, I'll start posting in the main sections.