Hi Shaun,

I am in a very similar position as you. I am a CAD Design draughtsman and have a day job currently as a draughtsman for a local building contractor. Yet I have been working freelance since 2007 and aiming to eventually go solo full time, its just taking longer than planned.
As mentioned the work really is feast or famine and personally I have not got enough clients to go on my own yet, also in the past 5 years the competition for CAD services etc has increased greatly, just google CAD services, CAD outsourcing and you will see.
One thing is I am not an artist, more of a design engineer so you may have a wider client base compared to me and the CAD work.
For me it is very frustrating at the moment, when the work is plentiful I'm working all the hours available and think is this the time, then the work just tails off.

I admire Sebastian and follow his work on the Alibre design forums, by providing that extra service following the design/CAD stages is a great advantage. My career started of as a CNC programmer so I am going to look into developing my skills further in order to provide a wider range of services, like Seb does.

I guess this is not helping your decision much but thought it would help you a bit.

Good luck.

Alexander