[indieFan]

Here are just a few comments:

As someone who has a CNC to work with in "my" college lab, I can tell you right now that if you don't have anyone who is experienced in running one, you will find yourself extremely frustrated during the season trying to make parts. I have been coding everything directly into the CNC using straight G-codes and have now broken a number of tools due to incorrect speeds, incorrect feeds, or my personal favorite, incorrect Z-heights. Please do not make the mistake of thinking you will be able to learn to run a CNC quickly the way I thought I would. I read all of the manuals cover to cover before I took a one week training course at the company, and I still had no clue what I was doing while I was there.

There are also people that say there are programs out there to make life easier, such as MasterCAM, but they are only giving you a small part of the story. You still need to understand how that software gets integrated with the hardware of the CNC, esp. when it comes to the Z-axis. Until you gain that understanding, the software is worthless. (Yes, I still have to learn how MasterCAM and/or EdgeCAM is integrated with my lab's CNC.)

Other people have commented in part on the cost of the CNC so I'll only add that the tooling that was set up for the one in my lab cost $15,000 for just toolholders and what were considered the standard tools that we would be using. I do not know what the tooling costs would be like for a smaller CNC.

indieFan