Unfortunately my dear friend I am based in Melbourne and as you well know to get heavy machinery transported can at times exceed it's value.
Wouldn't know, I've never tried. Apart from a big anvil and swage block I bought on ebay from a farmer in Vic. But those were easily shipped up as extra cargo on a semi that was making the trip anyway, so was cheap. Ha ha, the semi arrived at my work during business hours, and the driver asked if I'd get a forklift from the factory. I just lifted them off and into the back of my car. My lathe and mill were both small enough that I could move them myself (in pieces.)
I'm still hoping one day to get a real (big) old lathe and mill. Don't mind paying for transport, if the machines themselves are cheap. Or free. But probably best not interstate. Unless I hired a van and drove it myself.
I've seen people before buy machines that would struggle to stir my coffee let alone machine anything substantial or to any reasonable finish, I seriously looked at other bigger machines but as I pointed out earlier I have ready access to a fully equipped machine shop not 10 minutes away for any major work.
The only time a 'tiny' machine ever interested me, was a jeweler's lathe. So cute. But apart from that, the bigger the better. The 20mm spindle bore limitation of my Sheraton lathe pisses me off very often.
The Sieg Super X3 was sufficient to do most of the smaller projects around here including stainless, aluminium and black steel, the only issue's that I have found with it are lack of bed space once you bolt up a vice or rotary table
Heh.
http://everist.org/NobLog/20121128_monitor_stands.htmand under certain feeds and speeds chatter needs consideration, so firm gibs and lock everything down really tight, also the Y travel is only 140mm overall so +/-70mm and I'm forever flipping stuff around particularly large plate and then having to re-locate edges or holes and people don't realise that at times half the job is the set up on it's own accord.
Or, 90% of it, if you're stumbling around improvising, like me.
Also I've never needed to run full flood coolant and in turn a catch tray, drip or brush fed cutting fluid is fine for most of my projects
See, this is what I mean. I'd never heard or thought of those. Usually I just run the cutting fluid very slowly.
and I use kerosene on aluminium, swarf gets flung all over the place so people need to set strict safety guidelines for any machining process and also consider other people nearby as well as neighbours in regards to noise.
To control the splashing and swarf, I have some sheets of copper foil I bend to suit whatever job I'm doing, and hold them down with weights or magnets.
My personal recommendation to people is to learn at the very least the basics skills of manual machining and work holding before even thinking about jumping into CNC, you can hear and feel what the material, machine and cutting surface are doing when manually machined, not so much with CNC.
I don't think I'd ever be game to try CNC on big machines. For the reasons you give - I don't trust my ability to guess how the work-machine will react. I get that "BANG! whiizzzz.. tinkle tinkle" effect now and then from getting it wrong just by hand. Not so much these days... but still. A project to begin after the current stuff (stand for the metal folder) is finished, is a custom 3D printer, but with the head being interchangeable between an extruder, a router, and an ink-jet print head (I hope.) That will be my first try at all the CAD stuff required.