Cutting wooden letters and shapes - purchase help for a newbie please!

[irving2008]

...probably 10th0 a week perhaps..

Was that 10 a week or 100 a week?

If the letters are 6"/150mm high on 11mm MDF and you are talking abut low run rates then if you started with a small blank precut say 170mm x 170mm you'd get 98 letters out of a sheet of MDF with <5% wastage. You could get B&Q or whoever to precut these blanks for a small sum about £10. In that case you could get away with a much smaller/lighter/cheaper machine around £500 - 600 new or even less if you picked up an ebay used bargain. You could even build a suitable machine for that sort of work from MDF for £300 or so, to an existing established design, which for someone with your evident hand-working skillls should be relatively straightforward.

While obviously cutting from a full or half sheet of MDF is preferable from a speed/materials cost/job run perspective (especially if you were doing a 100 a day!) its something you could then aspire to as the business develops, by which time you'd have the knowledge/skill to make the more complex decisions about specifications and whether to buy/build.

Heres an example of what you could buy (not suggesting you get this one, before Jazz leaps in lol) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sable-2015...item3a791045f0