Can see where your coming from but still like the idea of doing it myself & Phill has a business to run so time is money to him, I know him but wouldn't say well enough to start asking him to do stuff for me unless it was as one of his customers & then it could become expensive.
I have a pretty good range of tools that have built up over the years either through DIY projects or things that I needed for work so that's not a problem for me.
No start or finish dates in mind to be honest, it will take as long as it takes & I will get on with various bits as & when I can. I've looked about at electronics & motors & have a pretty good idea what I need from reading the book & reading various posts on internet forums like this one but haven't got round to sorting anything out yet as far as from where or who.
It will run on a windows based system, probably widows xp as I have quite a few licence keys for it & it is really all that is needed. For the actual machine then it is likely to be Mach3 which seems to be popular with people & there seems to be a lot of support & help available and at just over 100 squid for a full licence seems reasonably priced. Cam software I am unsure about at the moment, haven't had the chance to sit down & see what is available & what tutorials/support any of the software has. Design software is something I don't need to bother with, as a signmaker I have that base covered & the programs I use already will export dfx files which is all I believe they need to do so at least there is something that I don't need to sit down & try to learn from scratch lol.