I certainly see the benefit of a THC, especially on a big table. That said, we use straightline cutting tracks quite often at work and it of course just has a manual height control. There isn;t a whole lot of piercing done, but it is done sometimes.

If a small tale is made, say 2" X 4" or so, and used for thinner materials, is there a need for the THC? Will consumables last significantly longer?

I am thinking about throwing together a small table, I already have access to a machine controller, currently on a small homemade router, running Mach3. It has quick disconnect cables so that we coudl plug it into a different machine in the future and configure for the different motors and dimensions.

I am thinking of a very simple machine with only manual Z height and steppers for X/Y, either a small gantry or a small cantilever machine, hooked to a yet to be purchased PP50 or similar.
John