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Message: [QUOTE="me2, post: 362238, member: 3825"] What you are wanting to do is WAY better than hand holding the torch. I considered doing something similar. To get the most out of it, you'll need to use some good guides. Probably CNC quality guides. If you look at Charlie's setup on Youtube, he is using some nice round linear guides. So basically, it comes down to hand moving the torch and making patterns or generating the patterns in CAD and having stepper motors move the torch. For me, the patterns would drive me nuts. They would be as much work to make as the part, nearly so. Yes, you can cut nice straight lines with a wood saw and sand various shapes, but how do you place one hole at (X3.075, Y-2.678) and another at some other funny co ordinate, which is how the numbers come out some times, especially when you work on a project with both metric and imperial parts. I'd be back to hand laying out parts and once I do that, I actually prefer to work in metal over wood. I'm actually going to do the reverse of tracing patterns. I'm going to make my table heavy enough that it can do some light routing and then I can make a proof from light wood or plastic from time to time. Something like that would be extremely handy for getting all the bugs out of the transmission adapter plates, for example. Don't get too caught up in the cost numbers outlined in that article. You need the plasma cutter and air compressor either way. Your tracing system will need good guides. You can live without torch head control. You can cut without a water table, but once you can cut parts, its easy to add the water trough. What most of the commercial CNC plasma table companies are selling is the benefit of the PACKAGE and most of the "package" is the software they tout. CNC software is an interesting area these days. I plan to run the table with GRBL on an Arduino processor. I'm not sure if I'll use the Arduino servo driver shield or if I'll use Geckos are something similar. In any event, the stepper driver electronics is not terribly expensive. FYI, GRBL was invented by a guy running a laser CNC table who was frustrated with the controller he was using. I think there is a lesson there. I CAD my parts no matter how I build them, mostly because I can't build intricate parts from thoughts in my mind (at least the first try) and if I am going to make a paper drawing, I might as well make a CAD one because after the first paper draft, CAD is faster. So with GRCL and Arduino running the table, all I need is a piece of CAM software to convert the DXF files to GCode. I used to and still do that by hand (!), but I think I am going to automate that in the near future. There are a number of free and low cost packages out there to help. Will my process do everything that MasterCAM does ? Nope. Do I need it to ? No. Right now I just need to make a few engine parts. When I need more than that, I'll upgrade. [/QUOTE]