This is a great guide. One word of warning: it's not the shop tools that will cost you real money over the longer term, it is the tooling. It isn't rare at all to spend double or more on tooling than you did on your CNC machine, especially if you bought it second hand. So keep a sharp eye out for local machine shops going out of business and ebay to score tooling in quantity, sort out what you think you'll need and sell the remainder. That's going to cost a very small fraction of what you would spend otherwise.
To give you just one example, a pretty common 1/2" dia 3" long quality endmill will easily set you back $40 or more.
And you never have enough clamps and hold down gear.
I wouldn't recommend buying anything other than brand new cutters. People overpay for used junk. New cutters can be pricey, but you only buy what you need anyway.
To give you just one example, a pretty common 1/2" dia 3" long quality endmill will easily set you back $40 or more.
And you never have enough clamps and hold down gear.