Although acme leadscrew or a true ballscrew with anti backlash nut is nice, threaded rod will definately work well enough for your purposes. My current machine uses 1/4-20 threaded rod and I use cuttingboard material (HDPE) for the nut. I threaded it with a standard hand tap. I use my machine about 3-4 hours every day for my small manufacturing business. The repeatability and accuracy are more than adequate for this purpose and way better than you could ever dream of getting by hand.
My whole machine from scratch cost around $400 Canadian to build, including all electronics and hardware, everything.
Do a lot of research and read the forums extensively to see what can be done and what options you should consider for your machine.
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