Welcome for the forum. St. Maarten?, let's look on the map....

...right... if you cover flights, accomodation and bar bills I think we should be able to get a design team to come out to help for a couple of weeks? I'll bring the paper and pens. Just let us know when's good for you...

I do recognise your desire to build to learn, a good thing in my book...

You start by describing what could be a rather conventional and simple build with cutting plastics and laser engraving, then you throw machining aluminium into the equation as well. Up until you added aluminium I'd have suggested investigating whether a laser cutter/engraver would be more appropriate - that's obviously your call to investigate; shipping must be a major contribution to the purchase cost so if may be cheaper to buy a complete machine that organise shipping for individual components.

Is your cutting area for aluminium similar to that for wood/plastic? Are you sure that you're looking at a single-machine solution?

Look at some of the build logs - if you've not already done so - there's been some superb examples of builds with hand tools. Create an entry in the build-log area and start posting your sketches for a design - you'll soon attract comment and criticism :) - all constructive, of course. You're better placed than most to plan before you buy here.