Thanks for all the input fellas. Billy, I'll check out that site tomorrow, maybe show the boss. I found an interesting article on the costs of RP (Rapid Prototyping). It's just scary how much the machines, supplies, service contracts and repairs/spare parts are. About a quarter million to get started for what we need, from what I can gather. That ain't gonna fly!
The size of what we prototype varies, and right now, we are doing a lot of multi-piece CNC jobs that we glue together. We're making chair arms, odd-shaped castings, and entire chairs that are just mock-ups for design reviews, etc. One of the biggest killers right now is the Z axis. As you can imagine, a chair seat and back, when a one-piece design, requires a large Z. What we are doing is cutting it in two at the seat/back junction. We are also having to do a dual set-up on our mill due to 13.5" max Y travel, ie: setting up and machining forward half, then re-zeroing on the back half after sliding the mill head back, and then machining the rear half. We also have a large tablet router for really large pieces, but setup on that machine is a gigantic PITA, and the accuracy is not as good as the mill. .002 vs .0005 or .0001 I think.
I belive the route we are going to pursue is to acquire another CNC mill, another seat of the CNC software and set up our own CNC area where we can watch the mill run from our location. Currently, we have to go over to the production plant when the mill is not in use by the machine shop and run our parts. And right now the only seat of the CNC software is on one of the mfg. eng. PC.
I'll take some pics of what we're working on right now and post them tomorrow if I get done in time, or else the next day. I have to run the bottom side of a seat casting tomorrow, in two stages.