What's the advantage of this over a 3018 or 3030 machine? With some basic upgrades (you mentioned needing to diy anyway) you can easily cut aluminum on those for $500 or less.
I tried [1] - replaced the sides with 2040s, blind-jointed every extrusion, replaced X with MGN12H + 4 carriages, replaced the whole Z with 4080U and even bolted it into an MDF box to stiffen it up. The 3018 could cut alu, but not well. Maybe it was the 4080U but it just didn't work for me, it could cut alu but had lot of chatter.
For $600-800 it is fully enclosed, includes a decent spindle, wifi-enabled +offline RRF-based controller with folding/rotating LCD screen, 2 power supplies (24V + 48V for the spindle), a chip vacuum and probably some more I forget.
This machine was designed [3] specifically to cut alu rather well for < $1000, can run adaptive clearing toolpaths at 0.5mm optimal load and 3mm doc at 1800 mm/min with a 6mm end mill and produce decent chips. It can probably do more, my standard settings are 1200mm/min, 0.5 woc, 3mm doc. Mind you, this is all still hobby-level though you could still push the feeds and speeds a bunch I reckon.
