I'm a welding teacher and my principal tells me he has about $5300.00 that I can spend for a new piece of equipment, but it has to be something new to my shop. I have the usual welders, stick-mig-fluxcore-tig, hand held torches, bandsaw, ironworker shear, 4' slip roller, bend tester, drill press, plasma cutter, cold cut chopsaw, 6" belt sander with 12" disc, rod bender, hydraulic tubing bender, oxy-acetylene track burner, oxy-acetylene pipe beveler, hydraulic press, air compressor and even a CNC plasma gantry that we built from a kit years ago.

We mostly weld on 1/8", 1/4" and 3/8" plate with a few odd sizes thrown in. We weld flat plate, tee joints, V's, groove welds with backing for AWS D1.1 and some open root plate. For tig we get into some aluminum and a little stainless also. We do not do that many projects anymore because of funding and time constraints so my project type equipment goes pretty much unused, but for the Project Based Learning assignments that are mandated by the state, two per year.

Is there any piece of equipment I have not mentioned that would fall into this price range you might recommend?

Thanks,
Louis