Thanks for taking the time to write those details up Neale. Afraid my budget certainly isn't spanning towards the £1000+ mark right now but as a steady project over a year or so I might be able to assign those kind of funds.

I'll have a look into the design you mentioned to see what its like. My plan was to create a mdf machine which 'works' to learn and make mistakes on so if I get to the point where I'm more serious I could justify the extra spend on something more solid.

For last 12 months I've been ripping out random printer bits with a view to reusing bits but its quickly seeming like that's a no go lol