Cutting metal shapes

[jmac80]

Hello everyone

What I would like to do is cut small shapes from metal plates, mostly aluminium but at lower grades like 1050 and about 16gauge / 1.4mm thick as it would be used for jewellery.
It would be small designs and shapes, circles stars etc on average about 1" diameter.
Now I thought I found the perfect machine with a cheap Chinese cnc router but after a fair bit of reading it would seem that it's not the best machine for the job on softer metals.
Is there a machine out there that would be suitable for this? Have a budget of about 2-3000.

Thanks very much