I'm with you on the pink foam Jerry. We were scared stiff of small cutters breaking off and killing us! Good old Ken put us onto foam and we learnt 3D in under a day and got terrific confidence. Genes cabinet shop suggestion is also good. Our local guy offered us any amount of blackwood offcuts by the trailer load for free. Sadly we then found out how dangerous this stuff is so stopped using it. Chazz you will possibly find your biggest cost feeding your Shopbot is tooling and I reckon we have all learnt from Brady that it is down right daft to even think about buying el-cheapo cutters. You can get a kilometre out of end mills once you learn the sweet spot for your machine.