I'll have to admit, having a plasma table is handy
I built one (4+ foot by 5+ foot) about 5 years ago. Previously I had one made a much smaller one. I had a summer where I was only working 3 out of 5 days a week, so that's when I built the little one, then built the big one when we moved into our current house with a garage.
it's a gantry (both side) design with a z axis. I moved the z from my inital one, since it mostly worked.
biggest single $$ item were the rack/pinions. Probably a good chunk of that was shipping to canada.
3x 280 oz/in for x & y and a smaller one for z. Drivers, break out boards, power supply
random table design from the internet.
Mach3 (old version), sheetcam and qcad are the software components.
I got it to move reliably at 1000 inch/minute (x & y), so 45 degree was about 1400. (no z axis hardware or torch)
most of my cutting is ~66 ipm for 16 gauge or 15 for 3/16. Probably can go faster, but....
one day I need to make a water table to keep the mess down
if you want more info, PM me, and I can put it in this thread.
here are a couple videos
https://youtu.be/QaKNz5mN2mohttps://youtu.be/Sb2a2aRE77Asorry for the dark videos.
Allan
p.s. oh yeah, the point of this: if you can build a car, the plasma table wasn't that tough.