[techhelpbb]

Going to agree with BeardyMentor and Gdeaver on this:
You can't build the entire robot with the waterjet unless you simply are using a lot of other COTS parts.

There's nothing wrong with using a waterjet, CNC or whatever other tool you have access to; unless you eventually end up abdicating know-how from it. If you find you have some experienced engineers CAD/CAM/CNC your parts (IE the students have no part of the drawing, design or manufacture) for the students all the time: maybe those tools are not helping.

Also if your team is large enough hand crafting may not be a big deal.
Personally though, I think all students that want to do fabrication should hand craft before they start playing with CNC anything.
I find it somewhat distressing if a student can't tell me how to location find or square up parts on a mill or anything like that.