i do a lot of routing of 1/8" alu, and i would think that would probably be the way for the hobby shop to go. you can also do a lot of cool wood working with it, aside from the alu, to help cover the expense of buying/building a machine.
cutting something as you have disccribed should only take a couple of minutes to cut with a router, on the other hand a laser would probably knock them out in about ten seconds, they are amazing.
i would also think that looking into a plasma machine might not be a bad idea either, depends on how many parts you are planning on producing.
in my experience, i built my router to do woodworking, signs, doors, and other decrative items. as soon as a friend asked if i could cut aluminum though, it seemed like it changed everthing about my hobby/business. i tend to do mostly aluminum now. sure it takes a little longer to cut than wood, but i end up with perfect parts everytime, with the wood for some reason or another it seemed like i scraped about 25% of the items from tear out, ugly sap or grains. now i am almost wishing that i had spent the majority of my aloted funds on metalworking tools instead of wood working.  |