As I grow older, no longer can I work as hard with my hands as when I was young, so automation and machine accuracy does help.

Besides, all of you are pros and I'm only beginning to learn milling (although being an electrical/software design engineer and small inventor, during my medical instruments design/fab career, I've worked with production engineers, machine shops, etc.)

Now, I neither need a CNC mill to earn money directly by repeat fabrication, nor am I hobbyist / amateur user. I am a small researcher who wants to build prototype designs (coming out of say Solidworks) so I may reach the proof-of-concept stage. This doesn't need aircraft-level precision; in fact just 2 or 3 thou precision can get you there. Even if one prototypes out a dozen that I build works well, I can go to investors, try to sell some parts or the idea.

May I ask all of you for your unbiased views on my conclusion below about what people like me (with a budget of say $10-15K) should consider buying (considering the Tormach video):

("unbiased" is bold because on this forum, most people reading this are Tormach machine owners. And, those who don't own a Tormach have shown more faith in the video review.)

1. What Jason says and the similar experiences of so many others (on Facebook, and in the comments section on the Youtube review), seem genuine and thus creates that fear of "risk" for someone who has never owned even a manual mill.

2. Why wouldn't someone like me risk just around $3500 for the Microproto CNC with servos and that might get me the precision of 0.002" or so, rather than a $12K Tormach

3. And then I saw this: Mini CNC 5-series personal mill which seems much nicer than the Tormach for about the same price or say another $3-4K more. (Not everything made in China is bad just like not everything made in US is good.)

Thank you friends, for your time and comments as they help a person like me a lot.