I was recently trawling Youtube and came across a channel called Ades Workshop - this guy bought a Warco 16B machine which looks reasonable both in terms of cost and quality

His output looks ok from a hobbyist persepective - so my idea now taking on many of the above comments is to buy a machine akin to the 16B, fit a DRO and then use that to make a purpose but smaller CNC milling machine similar but Jazzcnc but smaller