The Taiwan mill I'm looking at isn't quite a "mini-mill". It's a 2HP bench top setup with a 8 1/4" x 33" table.
Like it or not, that is still a "mill-drill" that might even do a half decent job as a
substitute for a good drillpress -"good drillpress" having gone scarce in the market as well.
But not worth much as a mill other than fostering misunderstanding as to what manual mills neeed to do a proper job.
Easily an extra 1,000 to 1,500 lbs avoir of Iron in their ass, even to use the OTHER Taiwanese verticals - "Bridgeport type" manual mills heftier and more durable than "BeePees" (round-ram) or "BirdPorts" (dovetail ram) that were NOT starved of Iron whilst still in the egg. Forty-taper spindles for starters AND NOT Are Ate.
CNC y'see MAY be hefty. Most of it is hefty "enough", and some is scary massive.
But not always.
Since it doesn't get tired, bored, drunk, drugged, subject to "highway hypnosis", use cell-phones, ear-buds, need to go for a piss, eat lunch, take a shit, nor otherwise get distracted, a CNC critter CAN get the same amount of metal removed as a heavy-hogger by making a borderline insane count of LIGHTER cuts, and very rapidly. Identical parts can come out "lights out" even and hit the same spec all day, all year. Humans try to do that, the brain can go bugf**k off the boredom.
Have a care as to how you compare CNC with "all manual". The "yardsticks" are very different.
My biggest concern with going big is going broke before I can get started. $10k sounds like a decent deal on a VMC until it doesn't work for any reason and I'm sure paying double the cost in just repairs isn't impossible.
THIS .. is where yah learn that ability to fault-isolate and REPAIR CNC critters is more interesting and more useful, and even can PAY better if yer fast and correct first-go, at it... than pushing the buttons on one that never sets a foot wrong.
Because they DO "set a foot wrong" now and then. And SOMEBODY has deadlines to hit and needs good field service and/or "in house" and right capable "DIY" to prevent downtime from turning into loss of revenue or even loss of a good customer.
Machinery with nothing able to conjur up the odd challenging surprise about it?
Spare me. May as well watch re-runs .... on a black and white still photograph.