A word of caution for those starting to build a CNC: be realistic. This ancient sounding acronym does not reflect the true nature of the beast. All seems easy at first; a great facility, time saver, produces excellent results with a professional finish and CNC is inherently flawless and beats building things by hand by miles. As you learn, that technical flawlessness is actually not possible and any machine that can take you close to it comes with a price. You will learn any tiny little tolerances will add up and make it extremely difficult for you to produce an acceptable result.
There is a steep learning curve that includes mechanics, concept, design, pre-planning and post-planning, safety. I am not even getting into how difficult to find the space in your house for even the smallest CNC and the required array of other things to support any production to be done on it. All that I have mentioned so far makes this type of production as one of the most difficult to master and mature in and we are talking about mastering the whole thing complete with concept, design etc.
I have fried steppers, burnt controller cards, damaged the table on the cnc. In the end, I realized that along with all the things I mentioned earlier, you need to be very patient and devote more of your time to get anywhere with this hobby. There is one more thing I would like to mention: hand dexterity. Unless you have it you are doomed forever. I found in my case, my brain works quite well in most situations but my hands don't do the job properly. If you have the gift, you will benefit a lot from having it. If not you might as well consider getting the work done for you. With all these stringent requirements about mechanics that should be the way to go.
I suck but I have never given up
