We've had our desktop for about a year and we're loving it! We can use a second machine and the principal is all for it. We're making signs, electric guitars, small jewelry boxes, ...pretty much anything our little brains can conjure up. (and my 61 year rookie bot programming brain can handle:-)
So I saw the blurbs about the Handibot and pretty much dismissed it as too small to be used in our setting:THEN I saw the video where the handibot was cutting out 12' long stair risers and doing all sorts of cool stuff on bigger jobs.
...which got me to thinking: for the price of one desktop, we could get two handibots, and make dedicated jigs for some of the stuff we're using the shopbot for. a great example is that we make lots of bedside stands in the 14"x16" x 32" (roughly ) size and kids are enjoying vcarving designs and script into the tops of the bedside stands. It looks like we could make a dedicated jog specifically for this purpose, (as well as table tops, signs, small parts, etc.)
that's the LONG winded way of asking the question: are any of you teacher types out there using the handibot, and what's your impressions?
thanks
Karl Hoyt