Jazz,
Not one bit of animosity felt at all.

It is fine going down your route, but in all honesty, even though it will produce a much finer machine, can everyone afford to go down that route?

It has been worked out (and not just by me) that by going down the route I am, I should be able to produce an acceptable working machine for less than £1600, and that includes the cost for mill and 4 axis RT.
I am fairly new to this electronic sort of work in the shop, except for building a Divisionmaster for my large mill, that is why I called in help from a very good friend who designs machines for the average model engineers we have now, in fact he designed and made the protos for the hobby CNC machines produced by Sieg, which although based on old technology, are doing sterling service in many thousands of home workshops.
Well we are on the same road again, making two of the same machines, just that one is geared towards the self assembler as a bolt on kit and mine, which will use a better engineeredand machined unit, takes a little more time and effort, but in the end works much better mechanically

It is the old addage about a Mini and a Rolls, they both get you there in the end, just that one costs 5 times as much to cover the same distance.


OK going for all the latest and most expensive pieces, and I am sure that yours would be a much superior machine, but for what I need, and most probably what another 95% of modell engineers require as well, going down the route I am will be perfectly acceptable.

I remember in the mid 80's having a new CNC Bridgeport delivered to our model shop. Except for size of work it could do, these small home built machines would knock spots off what the Bridgy could do.
It is all about progress. In 10 years, your stuff will most probably totally out of date. Some of us are just a little behind the times, but we do still have a little bit of cash left in our wallets.

John