Hello and help!! Advice needed for an absolute beginner.

[Kitwn]

Paul,
My wife, who is a qualified accountant, taught me all about the cost triangle. The three sides are MONEY, TIME and QUALITY. Once you fix one parameter the other two are inversely proportional. So if you have a tight budget be prepared to put some time into making a machine capable of the quality you want. A lot of that time will be researching the best design, probably a fixed gantry as Jazz suggested, and how you will construct it which depends on the facilities and skills you already have.
You won't be short of advice on this forum! Just keep asking the questions.

[Doddy]

Paul,
My wife, who is a qualified accountant, taught me all about the cost triangle.The three sides are MONEY, TIME and QUALITY

Eh!?

My wife claims the cost triangle is an equilateral triangle. She agrees with MONEY, but the other two are chocolate and wine. This, she says, is the formula to keeping her as a wife. The only inversely-proportional coefficient is the Nag factor.

I think your wife needs retraining.

[Kitwn]

I think your wife needs retraining.

No, actually I think your wife and mine would get along very well!