Not really. It would be like building a Ferrari one part at a time. The only way this would work out from a price perspective is if you got a complete playfield for real cheap and then found a scrapped cabinet with proper transformer and display. This is unlikely. I would just get a starter early digital pin for $400-800 instead. This is what I did.

Technically it's possible. But not practical.
Look at the original attempt at building a new MM. Took tons of time. And not every part is available. So you'd be looking at waiting for some parts to come up for sale or even worse. And it would cost you a TON more.

In Canada, you will get dinged on shipping everytime so the answer is no.

It would suck if you got most of the parts you needed and the last 10% were unavailable. What game are you considering this for?

By the time you buy the decals, the pieces, the time etc....you are in for a long haul...believe me I know....

You certainly won't save any money doing it. The retail cost of the parts would far exceed the cost of an entire machine.

Oof...you picked a game that's popular, but that doesn't mean that parts are plentiful or cheap. You can pick up a routed TAF for maybe $4000.
If you piecemeal it, you're going to wind up being relegated to buying new parts for the most part...and that's good...except in cost. Suddenly a bare playfield is going to run you $1500. That's without a cabinet, boards, or even one scrap of wire or one plastic or mech.

I did some quick scrap paper math before I purchased my first machine since I was thinking about this very thing.

And yep, the cost of the individual components plus any scraps you can find would far exceed the cost of an individual machine. You can spend around $500-$1200 on the transformer/PSU and boards alone, depending upon the machine.

Then there are the display(s) at about $200 each (which can get costly for 4-player numeric games), the backglass ($50-$250), the playfield ($25-$1500, depending on condition, NOS, repro, etc), the cabinet ($25-$500, depending on condition or built new), $300 for decals/stencils, $60 for legs, $100-$200 for coin door, $50 for shooter assembly, flipper assemblies $40-$75 each, ramps about $75-$200 each, set of plastics $60-$300...

I figure you'd be up to around $2000 at that point, on average, and that's without getting very much into the playfield parts.

A guy built a MM from scratch with just parts well before the MMR was announced, so it can be done, although I think it would cost more.

We had a guy up in WI looking for the head of a Bad Cats. I don't know what came of it but the previous owner was hunting for awhile and couldn't piece it together. I almost purchased it but I realized that it would be a nightmare finding and putting that headbox together.

I've done this a few times. I built my getaway from about 7 different machines and have spent about the cost of a game in that condition except without having done all of the labor. I've also built a mystic from a NOS wired playfield again...would have been cheaper to just buy one.

Learning experiences++

-c

Most people here are fair with their prices. Keep a close daily watch at the classifieds here and save yourself a whole lot of grief piecing one together!