China or UK

[Wookie]

Hi,

I'm searching around in vain trying to find a machine that will fit my requirements, it's a right old head scratcher and just when i think i have nailed it a doubt creeps in or i find a comment that puts me back at square one.

Bit of backstory to bore you all with, i mainly work with wood and mess around building e-cigarettes for personal use, as mentioned in my intro the tools i have are pretty basic, plunge router, bandsaw, wobbly workmate, just getting a level to route on a workmate is a task in itself and i would like to work with more precision, cutting brass with a fret saw and filing it with a needle file for hours on end to fit a recess gets old pretty quickly after the fourth day

A friend told me about desktop CNC machines and i decided to have a sniff around, yeah that ended well as there are so many offering the moon and i'm a cynical bugger at the best of times so i found your forum here and read up a little.

Now if i was sticking to purely wood then the decision would be a lot simpler i believe but since i'm an awkward sod i need one that can handle aluminium as well, cue much banging of head against a wall.

Space is a big problem so i'm after a fairly compact unit, the boxes i make aren't big, height of the box is no bigger than 6" width the same and the depth of them is never over 3"
the pocket inside the boxes is roughly 25mm in depth 45mm wide and a height of about 90mm.

Here's a brass and Indian Rosewood one i did about a month ago



and there's that brass faceplate that nearly cost me my remaining follicles

So that's the dimensions of the boxes i make and hopefully i can find a desktop CNC that could handle that in both wood and aluminium, a machinist friend of mine recommended i aim for a machine that can handle a 6mm end mill when machining alu, i thought i had found the ideal machine in the 'mini muscle v2' but on reading a bit here most people are going with a 2.2kw WC spindle for anything aluminium and he doesn't offer that option.

I then looked at the Stepmores site that offered that spindle and upgrades like cast base and square rails, i know cast can vary wildly in quality so i guess it's all a gamble at the end of the day, i'm wondering if this with all the optional upgrades would be up to the job? any opinions on it?

http://www.stepmores.com/product-557...4c8b4568.shtml

I'll be honest i would prefer the machine to be UK sourced just for the support alone, i have looked around and the likes of Marchant Dice seem well over the knock
As for building one myself i wouldn't know where to start if i'm totally honest and i'd like to be using one sometime this decade lol

If you got through all that drivel then well done, any advice or opinion is received with thanks.

Cheers