So My father and I have been looking at getting a CNC mill for a while, my reason for the mill is simple, in my Mechanical Engineering program I've designed several small 2"x2" by .5" tall parts I wanted to mill out of copper. My dad likes to Prototype inventions/small parts.
We know a guy that owns a local shop that has 3 or so HAAS machines and he told us to go HAAS. However, even a HAAS minimill would be upwards of 50-60K and right now I don't have the time to learn how to operate a CNC mill, and make the money to pay the financing on it and the tooling.
So what I am looking at is this, a Desktop mill would suffice I believe for everything we would need. I just know a high spindle speed is required for the Al, parts he would want to machine, and high speed is good for surface finish which I would need.
Now the question I have... What would be the best mill option to go with? Budget is a concern, and I already have Solidworks 2k8 installed on my desktop (which is what all the parts we would mill would be modeled in). That being said, I have a laptop I can strip down to run the mill, or I could build a micro PC that could run it.
I know I will need some CAM software, I've done some minimal G-Coding and frankly for my parts... It would take hours to manually write the code, so suggestions on an easy to use/learn CAM software would be helpful.
The local machinist my Dad grew up with uses Bobcad, and I know if I had some questions regarding that... he could be of some help, but I also know it had some issues trying to import my .sldprt files in the past.
Sorry for the long winded post.
Oh as far as available power, we have access to at least residential 230V service in our shop. Space isn't too constrained, we can shift some stuff around benches if need be.
So advice in all area's is welcome.
-Casey