I manage a fablab used by grad students. We have both manual and CNC machines. Haas, too, but the cheaper stuff (TM and an older OM, VF stuf is $$$ for research budgets).

The eternal compromise is this: it's way easier to dismember or kill yourself on a manual machine (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/nyregion/yale-student-die...). However, it's even easier to seriously fuck up an expensive CNC mill with a programming mistake.

Serisouly, these machine can and will destroy themselves if you tell them to, no questions asked or warnings. One single bug in your g-code and and there goes a 15K$ set of spindle bearings or worst.

Of course, a few tens of thousands down the drain is still better than dismemberment. But that also means that sometimes our machines are down for months or years until we can get a new grant to fix them.

Ah yeah I’m on the industry side of things, where such fixes just get expensed out the next day...can’t imagine trying to get a grant for every problem...

Getting your hands on a barely serviceable manual machine is easy though, which is why I started worrying. If the machine is out of production there might be something seriously wrong with it and if a novice starts compensating for the fault then the margin of error approaches zero.

Compund this with youtubers not uploading when they made a dangerous or embarrassing mistake and things start to look a lot more doable han they actually are.