What is the Total Cost of Conversion (Excluding the Mill)

[Monty_UK]

Well in that case I would look long and hard before buying a Mini mill because very few will have the RPM you need for cutting aluminium and soft materials correctly and converting the spindle is not a simple or cheap thing to do.

If you want a challenge you may be better off DIY building a strong Fixed gantry Router/Mill that will do everything you need and then some with the correct spindle fitted. It will certainly be more versatile and useful than a converted Minimill and won't cost much more. Here's one I built a few years ago (yellow one) with a 500 x 500 cut area and also one we built recently that is fully covered designed exclusively for cutting Aluminium moulds with a cut area of 600 x 400 which is more or equal to many industrial CNC machines but fits in a 1mtr/2 space.!

The blue one looks very impressive - do you know the build cost of that ?