I would tend to agree that the Tormach is overall a better value given their relative costs, but only IF you have the money, AND can justify the extra cost for a non-commercial hobby use toy. But in essence, yes, it's more machine for the buck certainly. A full kit still costs well more than 7 grand though.
Realistically, a lot of folks on here have a hard time just coming up with the money even for an X3. Even if you have the cash, hobbyists usually don't use them hard enough, often enough, or for anything critical enough to justify the extra cost versus the lousy MTBF. The maintenance overhead and relatively high downtime just doesn't affect us like it would in a production environment.
For hobby use the constant tinkering is a very acceptable tradeoff for cost. Even in a business environment where the mill is simply used seldom enough that it doesn't justify anything more expensive, an X3 can make sense. A friend has an auto restoration shop and uses his one or twice a month, maybe, and even then it isn't critical. For him it's perfect.
Talk about running a production business with one and the equation changes drastically, as then an X3 certainly wouldn't be the optimal choice, but it does have it's niche and it fills a very important one.  |