Everything You have is usable.
Everything You have could also be better.

Rack/p is easy and cheap.
Steppers and drivers are easy and cheap.

Find what you want to do.
And how much you want to do it.

I went "all-in" high end over 15 years ago and have probably spent over 150k€ on it - but I was also later paid well as the haas country sales manager, where I grew the sales 13x in 2012.

If You have a PC and a license and a working set of machx SW, most of your difficulties are less.
Vastly less.
Not because of anything about You or the tech, just that learning will be 100x less difficult and slow.

Try.
Work.
Build.
-- Learn.


There is no right or wrong.
The 70k€ HAAS industrial control is not vastly better than machx -- and the cheap chinese offline controllers for 300€ will be fine for 95% of users, esp. routers.
The 500k€ and up HERMLE is not vastly better in the control than HAAS, or machx.

Some new japanese sw controllers might be really better -- but You wont find them.
Some new sw controllers -- likewise.
I am testing and considering them.
But they run on their own 1500 € proprietary hw. Says 600€, but it´s really 1500 by the time it´s done.
Another, centronics, might be good, but its also about 2500 € like everyone else.