Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan View Post
Was the price you calculated including supported rails on all 3 axes? If so then of course it will be more, however having supported rail will massively increase the rigidity of machine, so you're not comparing like with like.
My plan was for supported X Y only. It's hard to pin the blame on any individual component, it seems to be more of a death by a thousand cuts! The Redsail 3040 appears to have ballscrews and pretty solid construction with supported rails on the table at least. Can't see the lateral drive on the gantry. My DIY job was going to be pretty similar, and have the same steppers and is already £1200 without a water cooled spindle, frame or software. Plus it needs assembling and probably ends up using a PC printer port rather than an dedicated PCI card. I don't think I could squeeze those in for under £300! And I'm not sure I could engineer a gantry as sturdy as the one pictured - looks like 12mm slabs of Aluminium to me. Wish I hadn't seen it now.