As you said, to a point. In my experience some of the approaches to frugality can quickly become counterproductive and eat away critically needed development c

As you said, to a point. In my experience some of the approaches to frugality can quickly become counterproductive and eat away critically needed development clock cycles. Here's an concrete example: I made due for years with cobbled-together CNC equipment of various kinds. I bought an old Bridgeport CNC mill really cheap. Within a month of use the spindle transmission had to be rebuilt. It did not have an automatic tool changer or tool probing. After that I took a Bridgeport knee mill and converted it to CNC. No tool changer or tool probe. It did OK. Both of these represented HUGE time drains and detracted from the main mission in major ways. Later on I decided to do it right and leased a Haas VF6-SS. If I remember correctly the lease ran about $2,000 per month. Best decision I ever made. All of a sudden CNC was not a research project. The thing just worked and it could work 24/7 if required. It had an automatic tool changer and automatic tool probing. When properly married to Solidworks and a CAM program the setup was smooth as silk. This improvement in productivity was well worth the $2,000 per month and other costs (tooling, setup, training) in that it quickly returned everyone to being focused on what we were actually trying to design rather. It also opened-up design possibilities that did not exist before this machine arrived due to what was lacking on the cobbled-up machines (fourth axis being one example). That's not to say that I am not for being frugal and creative whenever possible. For example, we used the CNC machine to manufacture custom assembly tooling that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase. We also made our own sub-table for the machine and saved tons of money.