solakali,
I was at the same spot as you about 6 months ago. Wondering how to learn and definitley not able to afford the official classes offered by the resellers. A local company is letting me use a MCam X seat on the weekends to try to learn so I can build the skills to get a job. I have tried many of the training materials mentioned above and can give you some comments about my experiences.
I bought the Tips For Manufacturing X Start Up and Surfacing CD's from the TFM web site. They are pretty good. If I had it to do over again I would just get the Surfacing CD. One thing that messed me up with the surfacing CD was that I was working through example parts practicing each toolpath etc as I went through the lessons one at a time. That has been a good learning technique for me in the past because actually practicing the lesson by making a part seems to help cement the concepts into my head. But I ran into a lot of problems doing that because I'd hit a wall trying to figure out how to do something that wasn't in the lesson that I was on and then be stuck. Finally I figured out that I needed to watch every lesson on the CD all the way through one time to get a feel for where all the info was located. Then I went back and started over making trial parts one lesson at a time and if I hit trouble I at least had an idea where to look ahead on the CD to find answers. That has worked pretty well for me. Even doing that I never have been able to get good surface finishes with the surface finish passes. The downside of the CD's is there is a bit of detail missing and no one to ask for help when you get stuck. For now I just gave up on finish passes and I am using the roughing toolpaths with tighter tollerances with OK luck. I'll figure out what I am doing wrong on the finish passes eventually I am sure. If I want to get the job I will have to. What I REALLY like about the CD's is that I can go back anytime and review a section which has been really helpful. There are a lot of little things that it is nice to be able to go back and refresh. I pull out the surfacing CD often still when I am trying to program something.
After using the CD's for a while I subscribed to streamingteacher.com for a 3 month trial. Very expensive for me so it was a real stretch but the learning was going slower than I had hoped so I figured it was worth a try. Those lessons are pretty good too. They are structured with more step by step on screen detail than the CD's above which was helpful for me. The thing I really didn't like about the streaming video is that once the subscription runs out they are gone. No reference material to go back to to refresh a lesson or toolpath or trick. I just couldn't absorb everything in the 3 month subscription timeframe with weekend only access to Mcam but I also can't afford to pay $240 for another 3 months just to review something that I didn't get down the first time. If you go to that site and subscribe you can do the Art tutorial for free. Try a few of those lessons and you will see the level of detail in the lessons on that site. The step by step detail is the best part of those but like I said the lack of permanent reference matereial was abig downside for me.
The deanzacnc stuff (eapprentice.net/lessons.htm) was great for just getting started. It is really basic and helped me a lot just getting familiar with the program layout and basic techniques. I would definintley watch those lessons first if I were you. Do those before anything else and before spending any $$$.
I haven't tried the books for sale on emastercam.com. They are expensive too and I can only afford to do so much. Others who own them have told me that they are a bit tedious but good reference resources.
That's my experience so far. Hopefully that helps a little bit. Best of luck learning this stuff.
Maxi
2008 Haas TM-1, 2009 TL-1