I volunteer at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham, MA. We are located in the Francis Cabot Lowell mill, the first fully integrated manufacturing facility in the US, and quite arguably birthplace of the American industrial revolution. To complement our historically oriented exhibits related to Waltham and Boston based industries such as textiles, clocks and watches, bicycles, Polaroid, and early autos our director is interested in setting up some examples of small scale current manufacturing technology, with the notion that we might both make tchotchkes for sale in the museum gift shop and have related educational programming about the evolution of manufacturing methods. I have suggested that both CNC routers and laser cutting would fit the bill nicely. (we have various 3d printers, but so does every school and library, we'd like to go beyond that). We have a grant that would allow us to acquire a CNC machine in the (very) low 5 digits range (eg $10-15K).
We'd need a machine that could be turned on and run a pre-programmed routine task by docents with only a little training. Dust and noise would be a concern if excessive. Any programming would have to get done by a couple of volunteers (probably including me) who currently have no experience with such things-- though most of the other guys are engineers and machinists, I'm the woodworker in the crowd.
Would the kind of machine discussed in this thread be appropriate in this setting? I'd hate to recommend something that would become a boat anchor due to insufficient expertise to make it work. How loud are these machines? Is there reasonable dust control? I'm imagining that we could box it in plexiglas to keep inquisitive fingers out, is that correct?
If you think this notion is crazy please say so!