Thanks again for your input Bill.
Well a VMS70 is a precision engineered unit, extremely heavy duty and cost £478 000 in 1978 and Neumann say they never made any money out of recording lathes' !! The level of engineering required to copy that design is beyond me, certainly a job for pro's. It would be cheaper to spend £10 000 on a used unit. I'm not reinventing the wheel at all, i'm simply making a new machine based on old technology. I intend to try and use off the shelf guide rails and lead screw married with a professional turntable. My new machine in a way has a new use, to be used by amateurs and DJ's etc, it needs to be built to a cost too so just nicking a pro design is not really going to give me what i need. The Neumann machine is more or less a "money is no object" super high engineer'd product designed for big buisiness.