Homebrew PCBs

At 16:44 11/04/2002 +1000, you wrote:
>The CNC will give you accuracy and repeatability without effort on
>your behalf. My question was is it worth money and effort building one
>of these machines to gain that accuracy in hobbyists quantities ?

For me, it isn't so much accuracy & repeatability that is the issue 
(although for some purposes, that is important too) - I just can't work up 
enough enthusiasm to hand drill 30+ holes when the alternative is to feed a 
drawing into my CNC mill & hit the "GO" button.

What I have found since acquiring my desktop CNC mill (a Taig) is that the 
number of uses I discover for it increases with each project I do. Sure, if 
you are building or buying a CNC machine that can only ever cope with 
milling traces & drilling PCB holes, then it is a lot of effort/cost for 
relatively little gain (unless you do a lot of prototyping or short 
production runs); however, if you build/buy a machine that is capable of 
doing other stuff too, then you end up with a versatile and useful tool 
that can be pressed into service for other jobs.

Also, for the hobbyist, don't underestimate the sheer 
fun/interest/achievement aspect of designing, building, and running your 
own CNC machine - it is a fascinating process in its own right.

Regards,
Tony