I am an engineer and a woodworker, spending some of my work days in AutoCAD and Fusion360 already, it seems like the next logical step to bring a CNC router into my home shop.

I am having a hard time narrowing down a direction to go and a budget that I should be searching for. The hobby shops have the $5-6k options pre-built and ready to go, but I feel like that must not be the best "bang for your buck"

I have been looking at CNCrouterparts.com options and am having a hard time figuring out which direction to go. If I went with one from CNCrouterparts, I would probably go with a 4x4 table, but the price range from their standard to a fully loaded pro system can range from ~$4k to build it your self and do the wiring of the panel myself, to ~10k for a fully loaded NEMA 34 pro system.

I hesitate to go lower end, other than the fact that I am very new to this, I work with a $1M 2 station 5 axis CNC at work so I feel like the interest is there...

Anyone have any experience with being in this stage and any advice based on the direction they went?

am I better off spending $3-4k on something like a shark or axiom machine and have something up and running out of the box to start?

THANKS!!!

Dan