I maintain a limited space but I've been weighting the prospect of a small CNC machine.

I have a product planned which will require turnings and complex shapes. I stumbled upon the ShopBot Buddy and it looks interesting and expandable. However, I wonder if a dedicated turning tool like a duplicator lathe would be better than a CNC fourth axis. The cost of the fourth axis is nearly that of a dedicated lathe, but does not require additional floor space.

I don't have a need for a serious volume, maybe 40 - 80 turnings at a time, which on a duplicator lathe I would expect that to be a day or so. With a CNC that does not automatically feed new material into the lathe I would expect to have my time pretty much dedicated to the turning work during that particular operation so whether or not I'm actually doing the cutting seems moot.

So, I'm open to thoughts from those with experience in this regard. Is the fourth axis painfully slow or surprisingly quick? For the buddy I am considering the one with a spindle rather than a router.