Hi both,

Wow - thanks both for your detailed replies - and please don't think I'll take offense, delighted to have some clear expertise on this (indeed this has been my biggest frustration thus far as it's very hard to get any statements of accuracy - ie if you imagine buying a printer, graphics card, electronics component etc, it's usually a lot much more transparent - eg they'll state dpis, range of colours, benchmark performance etc).

I have no attachment to this CNC at all, but it seemed to be the best I could find, however maybe I should angle this question another way....

If you had £1000-3000 to spend on a CNC, what would you get???

Few bits of background:
- Have a large double garage turned into a workshop, so decent amount of space - have an 8 x 4 table in there I'd be happy to convert (Clive - sorry wasn't clear, am happy to extend this table if need be, hence 3m x 1.5m!)
- Work in computing, wife studied electrical engineering and have renovated our house completely (electrics, plumbing, woodwork etc) - ie no issues at all building, programming components, soldering etc
- Also fluent in 3d software (3d Studio max, autocad, Maya etc) - so hopefully a fairly shallow learning curve to build models to then send to CNC
- Looking to build lots of woodwork elements - carved signs, tables with patterns etc so larger the better, but don't want to overly compromise quality/reliability

Stupid questions(!):
- When people talk about 'rigidity'/accuracy of CNC, how big a deal is this? Ie what's the scales? I can't tell if this is people who are carving Swiss watch components out of steel (ie they're getting worked up over 0.000001mm variance) or if it's pretty drastic - ie 1cm off. What is the effect I would see from this?
- How reliable is your average CNC? Assuming all configured etc, are they relatively reliable or should I be expecting every job to take several attempts? Are you able to set it running and come back and see the result in an hour or two or are you constantly nursing it through the process?

Many, many thanks for your responses - been really useful thus far!