Cost effective digital output for blade and lock profiles?

[clockworkfish]

Though i do not have the funds for anything at the moment what kind of machines would be best for profiling metal using digital files? Would cnc be the best possible solution for something that is reasonably economical and cuts accurately and quickly? Am i missing a different machine that i could own (instead of outsourcing) that would be fairly cost efficient for profiles?

 

[clockworkfish]

i should also mention that by cost effective i mean under 10 grand as i know a cnc with tooling and all the fun stuff will likely run around 3-5 thousand at the very minnium

 

[JCaswell]

That would be a cheap CNC machine---try about 10x that and you'd have to go cheap on some stuff to make it happen.

You need something pretty rigid for steel, ti, etc. So those little hobby CNCs are probably not the way to go. I would NOT go used unless you really know what you're looking at.
I know guy that spent $25K on a nice looking used Fadal and ended up dropping another $30K in it in the first year or so just fixing stuff as it broke. He could have bought a new machine in the same category and spared himself the headache and ended up with a newer machine in the end.

There really isn't anything other than CNC. You can blank parts by laser or waterjet to save CNC time and material, but if you want precision parts, CNC is the cheapest solution at the moment.