Advice/recommendations about new equipment for our machine shop

[protoserge]

What does your CAD look like for your current swerve modules? By the time you get tooling, you'll likely exceed your budget. I would venture to say you will want CNC for making parts, especially once you start removing a lot of material at angles and arcs.

The HF mini mill is too light duty in my opinion. Putting that $500 into another machine would be better spent. It most likely doesn't have enough working envelope to do what you want and will be even more limited when you want to add workholding equipment.

One thing you can do is build a small (2' x 2' or 2' x 4') CNC router table with a water cooled spindle. You can accomplish this within your budget using extrusions, ballscrews, and linear recirculating ball rails. Don't consider the Shapeoko. It isn't robust enough to be considered for doing work in metal.

If you can find a used South Bend / Atlas / Clausing / LeBlond / lathe without uneven bed wear (don't worry about backlash at this point), you can get an excellent platform at a very reasonable cost. Something like a South Bend 9" or 10" (10L "heavy ten" being a heavier duty lathe with larger bore) would be good. A Grizzly G0602 or PM1127 would be a good new machine for FRC purposes.

Buy a bench grinder and high speed tool blanks and you will have most all the lathe tooling you will ever need. You can use the lathe to make boring bars for holding small HSS cutters. You can use a lathe to make keyways. You can use a lathe to make custom threaded rods and nuts. You can use a lathe to make a lathe! Learn how to use a 4 jaw chuck properly and you'll just have fun with seeing how round you can make something. Don't forget to get dial indicators and magnetic bases.

As for mills, you want a knee mill or, at the very least an RF-45/IH (Industrial Hobbies) such as the PM940 or Charter Oak 12z. DRO is nice.

For your current budget, I would think that if you could only get one machine, it would be a lathe. Combined with a hand drill to make mounting points for work holding in a lathe milling attachment, you could actually do most of the precision machining of your swerve gearboxes with an end mill in the lathe in a collet. You can also chuck your sheet/plate part in a 4-jaw and use a boring bar to make bearing pockets.

Find sponsors - you'll be amazed at what you can get! I see you're already sponsored by Pratt & Whitney and UTC. I would bet that they can get some contacts if you need them! They may even have some machines sitting around unused in tool rooms that need a good home (and a tax writeoff).