As you have found, the size of the table is not porportional to the cost. If you just want to cut circles in flat (level) steel you just need a simple XY movement and a mechanical way to adjust the tip gap. No expensive THC or Z axis motors or electronics. The electronics for a two axis machine are pretty simple. For an area that size you can even use leadscrews and direct coupled steppers.
Take a look at this combo: Xylotex 3 axis stepper driver and 2 of his nice 296 oz-in stepper motors. Our inexpensive Mini-IO port one breakout and isolated input board (
www.CandCNC.com) and use something like the Bishop Wisecarver V bearings for rollers with their matching rails. (
www.bwc.com) There are some sources of low backlash leadscrews and nuts that won't break the bank. You do need to come up with a way to shield the leadscrews from the plasma dust that gets everywhere or consider using rack and pinion with a belt reduction on the motors to increase torque to the gantry.
Your 2000.00 is tight for any CNC project (even a simple table top engraver) so you will have to build it yourself.
The combination of MACH3 (159.00) and SheetCAM (159.00) are hard to beat. If all you are going to cut is simple shapes you can even get by without SheetCAM as long as you have a drawing or CAD program that will output a DXF of HPGL file.
For a little more money (once you have the motors, drivers and software the added cost of a table is just in the linear drive components and table construction) you might consider a 4 X 4 table. You will be surprised at what else you will find to use your table for and leave yourself the third axis option (Z) so you could add an integrated THC for MACH3. Campbell sells one for 350.00 and we sell a more advanced digital one for 695.00.
One advantage you have in building your own is that you can design it to be expandable and to add features in the future (if you choose the right software) and you will know how it works and how to easily fix it if it breaks.
Tom Caudle
CandCNC.com