ORIGINAL: SAVAGEJIM
As for a CNC machin to mod the engine, I wholeheartedly agree. I would love to have the exacting precision of such machining instead of hands and Dremel bits. Unfortunately, I am a casual RC fan and do not have the money to buy a quality CNC machine. I would love to have one though so I could get into modding, even semi-professionally.
Jim,you could just buy a manual micro mill that will do a proficient job and you could always upgrade by attaching stepper motors and the electronics.The manual mill will do the same job as the cnc difference being time and effort.
Personally(i have a mill) so far i've only modded my engines by hand as i'm pretty comfortable with a Dremel and setting up the sleeve/crank on the mill would take a fair ammount of time,by no means impossible but (say) setting up and calculating takes 1 hour,machining time a couple of minutes..do the whole job by hand... 15 minutes.
I,as you am only in this as a hobby but i love what i can do with my mill and the outlay is relatively small,maybe you should think about aquiring one yourself.
Pics of my stuff within this thread:
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_63...mpage_2/tm.htm