[qnetjoe]

Before you consider a CNC you need to ask yourself about the tool chain that you use and how does a CNC plug into that? How do you plan to get and maintain CAM software?

Way to often I see school buy a nice expensive CNC without CAM software and/or someone that knows how to use it; then it becomes a nice expensive paper weight.

Are students going to be trained on a manual lathe before using the CNC? If not what are you going to due to ensure that your machine is not always broken? Generally I recommend that a student know how to work a manual and learns the basics before working on a CNC.

Onto the machine. I generally recommend the Haas toolroom lathes. They can be ran in a near manual mode which is good for teaching basic lathe work and then you can slowly introduce CNC concepts. One cool thing about Haas is that the control is almost the exact same between the mill and lathe making learning both alot easier and allow you to focus more on teaching machine and not teaching the CNC control system.

Hope this helps if you want to reach out to me directly just PM me.