I'm considering a syil cnc mill for light duty (aluminium) home hobby work.

most of what I dream up is very simple and the only reason I'm considering cnc is to cut tangent arcs without a lot of set-up. there is probably other stuff I'll dream up also.

due to the size of parts I want to make, I would be looking at the x6 with close to the 300mm sq work cube.

the biggest limitations will be the Y and Z axis. I'm guessing that these dimensions are maximums and I would have to subtract tool diameter from the Y and tool length including the tool holder for the true work size?

say I want to mount a rotary table on horizontally on the bed so the axis is inline with the spindle. it appears this would chew up a lot of the Z movement? then a short endmill in a holder would chew up a good portion more. while I only need 50mm or so of Z movement under these conditions but I don't want to buy a very expensive mill and find it is to small.

can anyone give me an indication of how much Z travel you loose with tool holders and chucks? I don't think I will need large boring heads but it would be nice if I could mount an auto reversing tapping head to automate some of the tapping I would like to do.

the other concern I have is the spindle position. we have a mill/drill at work and while it has 200mm of Y movement, only 50-100mm is usable on the Y since the spindle is positioned at the outer edge of the cross-slide. to use all the movement you end up working unsupported off the bed.

is the syil spindle centrally located to the Y movement?