Realistically priced key cutting machines and the days I have spent investigating them

This is coming oh so soon. I hope to have my own modification parts available for these budget machines to make them comparable to the 1500+ dollar machines everyone says you will need to even begin to cut keys. Given I can have cut keys at a local lock smith for less then 3 dollars a key it does not make sense to spend thousands on machines when you will need thousands in key blanks/remotes to even make a go of all this...

Lets break down what I have purchased. Above is a machine that comes with many things. Having watched a couple YouTube videos on this machine you begin to see how the jaws they come with arent really suited for doing the same types of keys as the more expensive 1500+ dollar machines are. The rest of the machine is straight forward enough that cheap stuff works just as well as the expensive stuff. The jaw are the real important part of one of these machines. I thought maybe I would buy some replacement jaws from a machine 15x more expensive and fit them to this to do keys properly. It seems that the jaws on this cheap machine were really designed to clamp different jaw types manufactured for specific key types given that they were not machined in a way to even grip keys themselves...

I ended up buying some key jaws on Ali Express that I am waiting for at the moment as well as a variety of different milling bit/tracer bit sizes which is also important for doing various key types (especially laser cut keys). We will see how it goes....