Like any hobby in existence today, it costs you at least $1500 entry fee. Power walking will cost you that in shoes, monitors, camel back, clothes...etc....
Knitting might be an exception.
Seriously though, I'm in awe that you'd be so generous and considerate (unless you just want him to live in the garage
).
One other thing you'll need to consider is support tooling and software. Premature to buy software before having a machine..but some tooling is generic, like cutters, and clamping. Good carbide routers that'll fit what he's got now and future machines and clamping stuff like double sticky tape and the like would be worth considering. In industry, a good rule of thumb is figuring on spending at least 25% of the cost of the machine on tooling. ....I know Geof will correct me if that's an old thumb...
One option might be to scrounge parts and build his own machine...He'd know the machine inside and out, it'd be fairly inexpensive and you'd get more bang for the buck with a trade off in time.
I get the impression a gantry router would do the trick, but so would a used bridgeport retrofit....which to me is kinda the best of both worlds.