Someone at the time had a CNC aluminium one on ebay for $700 or so. I thought "I can do that cheaper". I was very wrong. The actual parts weren't too bad.(I still had to spend $1400 on the cameras IIRC), but the number of tools I didn't own was a lot higher than I expected.
Still no regrets, I had a fun week of arts and crafts and got to stick it to Elsevier and other academic publishers :D
It does sound like an amazing project you did there.
You are also making a very good point with the surprising effort and equipment this can take. I ran into trouble just fixing something on a heatsink the other day. Turns out in addition to drill, drillbit and tapping set i really need something to keep the drill straight :)
Still no regrets, I had a fun week of arts and crafts and got to stick it to Elsevier and other academic publishers :D