[DalekBaldwin]

The goal is the end product, yes. But there's joy to be had in getting there. And more importantly, I know I won't be able to achieve it without a good feedback loop for iterating on my designs, which means doing at least some machining on my own.

For one thing, sketching out variations on a design typically reveals there's a wide space of possible parameters in the spec. In many cases it's obvious that only a small subset will actually be technically feasible (either for machining or for reasonable functionality of the finished artifact or both), but not obvious exactly what that subset will be.

I'm not even talking about what could be revealed by finite element analysis or other formal methods (though I'm not averse to learning those too). I mean the feel, the taste, and the intuition I can't get from just drawing and doing the math. Like Jackie Stewart said, "You don't have to be an engineer to be be a racing driver, but you do have to have Mechanical Sympathy." I have mechanical sympathy for computing systems, for rapidly narrowing down appropriate design spaces in software projects, but I don't yet have mechanical sympathy for mechanical systems.