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Nerds don't care about girlfriends. If your son has one, he is not a nerd. From the sound of it his aspirations are more to be on Glee.

Yes, I did build the CNC machine. Actually two of them. A Sherline mill I did the CNC conversion myself on. And then a X3 (grizzly g0463, https://www.grizzly.com/produc...). The sherline I ended up making the parts for myself, the grizz used a premade set of parts, but still required all the work to be done.

You can spend several thousand if you want. I spent $99 and got a decent solidworks clone. Named Alibre at the time. it's now called Geomagic and goes for $200. But calling it several thousand is more just spreading FUD, which is what I am sure you are trying to do.

You started out with "Apparently there is quite a bit of ignorance about 3D printing here. Also slashdot has become populated with too many Apple and M$ users who have "it's not ready for the consumer" mentalities."

Then you painted a lie, trying to make it sound like the stuff works like grease. It doesn't. Using Blender for 3D printing is like (I said it elsewhere) making a wooden statue with scissors, it is idiotic at best.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Combo-Lathe-Mill/G9729

It's using a dremel as a tool head. It is not going to be easy to square it. Its going to be an open loop CNC. Maybe they should just make a kit to fit a grizzly mini mill?

Grizzly H6246

Built-in sausage grinder!

Power feeders have been available for years. They keep hands away from blades or bits, and prevent kickback.

See some here

I noticed emachineshop doesn't list example prices for any of their example parts. A simple washer came to $130. They wanted something like $800 for a steel plate with holes cut in it (for a test tube rack). I guess it's still useful, but I find it hard to believe I couldn't get a better deal talking to a machinist in person. In fact, considering I would need two plates, it would be cheaper to just buy a milling machine.

Name brand power tools: Good deal, low prices
House brand power hand tools (chicago electric, etc): utter crap
House brand major power tools: mixed bag - drill presses seem ok, jointer was POS
House brand mechanics tools (socket sets, etc): pretty good quality, excellent prices
House brand, anothing sharp: total crap, I have HF drill bits with a 160 degree bend in them, they never saw any hardening, and my pinky is sharper

I started shopping Grizzly instead. They carry many of the same tools, but I have yet to get a poor quality tool of any kind from Grizzly. Their prices are a little higher than HF, but well worth it.

Some of the replies are pointing to high-end (sub-micron) filter systems. This is great if you are dealing with pollen in a small room but they don't do well with the larger chunks.

For this, how about one of these:
http://www.grizzly.com/products/item.cfm?itemnumbe r=G9956

I use something similar for woodworking and have little dust problem in the rest of the house. A bit noisey but you said that this was a lab so that is do-able.