I was talking about whip without even knowing that was the correct term for it, ooops.

It's nice to know that some of the design solutions I'm thinking of have also been used in high end machines but I'm getting the nasty feeling that I'm about to attempt to design the best machine ever created only to find I've shot financial wad all over a machine that won't work because I'm a clueless muppet.

Plan d would be to go for a ghetto build as cheap possible where I can learn from mistakes without excessive financial harm and progress onto bigger and better when I have a clue.

My ultimate goal is for a medium duty machine that has a five axis spindle, a moveable lathe, a gantry overrun, enough precision to do PCB work and enough 'ooophm' to do occasional metal work.

This means that on one machine I can make accurate dovetails by mounting wood vertically at the portion of the rails that overshoot the table, carve detailed balusters using the lathe portion, carve out 8x4 sheets in wood or PU foam for concrete casting when the lathe is lowered, create small and smooth running brass gears and do PCB's.

Do you think it would be better to aim for the machine to end all machines first time round or build up to it over 3 or 4 builds, bearing in mind this is more a hobby project and not a roof over the head depends on it situation? I'm happy to be patient and learn but not happy to piss money up the wall on something useless.

Secondly I'll settle for a first build capable of knocking out good quality wooden kitchen cupboard doors (Do you detect a woman's influence in these design requirements? Why yes sir you do!) and PCB's (No female satisfaction required in this part, she will watching strictly come dancing) while I spend a few months learning the ropes, would an mdf build do this and bearing in mind I plan to upgrade the size of the cutting area 12-18 months down the line and also start tackling more demanding jobs, should I spend some cash now on decent motors/electronics and scrimp on the rails etc so I have the cash for future improvements or will this prove to be a nightmare?

PS I have an IT monkey background and much prefer linux over windows so I'll almost certainly be using linuxcnc/emc2 over Mach3 if it makes a difference.