Purchasing Used Kiwa Colt 510 CNC and making it work

[henry_phd]

I'm Director of Engineering at one of the local companies here in Las Vegas. We have Plasma and Oxy Fuel burn tables, and a number of welders, but no machining capabilities.

I'd like to start small and found a good deal on an old Kiwa Colt 510 CNC with a Fanoc controller.

I've researched and played with the camworks and mastercam demos and think I have the basic hang of things in setting up the tooling cribs and generating the g-code from a solidworks model.

The Kiwa is sitting with no power to it in a warehouse. What things should I look for in terms of buying an operational machine? What kind of tooling would be a good starting set to buy to handle A36 and T1 plate steel?

I'd like to buy a fully loaded new Haas CNC machine later but I need to prove the machining capabilities can be used and make/save us some money first.

Any suggestions for consultants/training would be greatly appreciated.