Good evening. I don't normally hang around here; I'm usually over at General Woodworking (when I'm not at OWWM).
I'm a high school Manufacturing Technology teacher, and I have a conventional, "old school" manual (wood) machine program. We have table saws, bandsaws, router tables, and so on. I'm an old school guy, too. I have zero CNC experience, although I can hold my own with a manual lathe and mill.
Next door is the CAD classroom. They teach CAD (Rhino, Chief Architect, Solidworks) to CAD 1 and 2 students, and they have a pre-engineering class where they use Rhino/Solidworks and export their work to a 3D powder printer, a laser engraver/cutter and a small CNC mill. The CAD teacher is pretty good with the various programs and machines.
Today I got a call from our Tech Ed director. He came into some money he needs to spend this summer, and the CAD teacher and I decided we need a good 3D router setup. Our idea was to more or less combine my advanced shop class with his pre-engineering class, since they are the same period anyway, and see what we could come up with.
Here's what I think I'm looking for:
First of all, I think my budget will be at least $10K, and maybe up to $20K, but let's assume the lower end for the time being.
Most of the stuff we do will probably be 2D, at least initially (signs and the like) and then we will probably get into some other stuff like clock gears, robot parts and so on.
It needs to be compatible with Rhino and Solidworks. We don't use Autocad.
It needs to be Plug and Play, and hopefully have good tech support.
Most importantly, it needs to be able to survive in a high school environment. A number of years ago the previous shop teacher had some kind of relatively low end 3d router setup and the kids apparentl destroyed it, but to be fair, I believe there was a problem with lack of supervision as well. That won't be a problem this time.
Thanks for your help; any and all input will be appreciated, as I have essentially zero experience in this area.
Dave