Hi again, one of the main reasons i was thinking of a 3 in 1 machine was not to try and save money but to save space i know if i build one machine as soon as i try it a few times i would want to start on a second one, I have been back in UK around 2 1/2 years now and in that time i have replaced quite a lot of my tools even though they will not get that much use, i have built two large size quad copters 2 planes and have a couple of 1/8 scale off road cars and every time i think i will just give something a go i get a little too interested and end up with more "toy's" to try and store i can hardly turn round without falling over something, every time i see something new which catches my eye i end up getting one then have to try and find somewhere to keep them. i have already had a go with arduino and raspberry pi i wish some of these things were out when i was younger i started off programing back in the 70's on a acorn computer at the time you could not buy one ready built and i ordered a kit which came in a big plastic bag and you had to solder every thing together even the keyboard was supplied in little parts with each key made up of two springs and 2 contacts which had to be soldered together and then attached to the board i had a extra 1 KB of memory which gave me 2 KB ram which 1/2 KB was used by the operating system but i managed to write the classic space invader game in the 1 1/2 KB, and from then on i think i had a go at just about every home computer there was available but that is many years ago now i doubt i will be writing any programs now people now do not know how lucky they are with all the great things that are available as long as you have a little money.

I was under the impression that all the laser and 3D printers used stepper motors for movement if not stepper motors what do they use? i know by the time i get this finished i could have bought a ready made machine.
I remember when i was starting out in engineering one machine i use to run was a sort or computer machine but it had a huge programing board where to get it to do something you had to plug in little colored pegs into the board which told it what movement to make that was back around 1969/1970 and that was meant to be the cutting edge of machine tools.

if you want to call round for a cup of tea you will be welcome the only time i will be out is around 4.30 as i have a doctors appointment then for my yearly "mot"