Benchtop CNC machine curriculum

[Austin Reid]

Hi all,

My company makes a benchtop CNC machine, the H-Series, which is ideal for a tech lab/Makerspace educational environment. We have many questions about what a curriculum should look like (we are engineers, not educators). Any educators/trainers in the group, could you please weigh in on this?

This is a single machine used to train students through a 6-part progression in CNC manufacturing operations:

1. 3D printing ->
2. Multi-material 3D printing ->
3. 3-axis CNC milling ->
4. Hybrid operations (print stock and mill it back) ->
5. 4th-axis operations (like a lathe with live tooling) ->
6. 5-axis multi-tool printing and milling

We have some questions:

1. In your opinion, what grade level would be capable of handling this training? 
2. What is a good amount of time to complete training in each module? Are we talking days/weeks of intensive training, or a multi-year cohort? (Sorry if these questions seem ignorant...again, we're not educators)
3. What is the best format for a curriculum - video, bullet points + photos, both?

Thanks so much for your input!