General Purpose Mill/Drill/Lathe Recommendations?

[JamesCH95]

^^ An old rule of thumb is that you should spend equal amounts on tooling and the machine itself.

Also, coated carbide tooling may seem expensive compared to HSS, but it's almost always worth it because the tool will last much longer and tolerate abuse from learning students. I recall a machinist TRYING to destroy a damaged carbide end mill in a demo for students, he had to run the mill full speed, in reverse, with auto-feed on full speed, through a hunk of alloy steel. It chipped the end mill and did some heat damage, and melted some of the alloy steel