You're completely right about the DIY vs. Industrial issue. And the reality is that I need both, a DIY solution to teach students "this is how they work, these are the fundamentals, this is how to fix them/change them/operate them." And I also need one that can be hooked up to other machines, and able to be a true industrial robot (not so much with weight capacity, but with reach), and be a true integrated system to show students: "That other one was a toy, now here's how to use a real one in industry."
But I basically now operate in Bureaucratic Hell, and I have to figure out a way to get the equipment to teach my students. And due to changes in how my organization operates, ironically enough, I've found that getting the "professional/educational/industrial" products is often not the right decision.
One of the worst things that can happen is that we buy a $250,000 piece of equipment. The administration will never ever budget for the cost of maintenance, consumables, tooling, training, everything else required to successfully operate it. Within a year, you're stuck with a $250,000 piece of equipment sitting in a corner collecting dust, that is always shown to VIP's on tours as the latest in greatest in what we offer. Oh, and it's so expensive, we're not going to allow students to use it anyway, because we can't let them break it.
And it's amazing, they won't have funding for that $100 tool I need to teach the students and use everyday, but every year they'll manage to find $100,000 to spend, a week before the end of the fiscal year, which we have to spend immediately, but it can only be spent on certain items, like the things that I don't actually need. Welcome to public technical education in America. (Sorry, obviously, you unintentionally touched a nerve.)
But if I can get something that costs $2000, well, I can either fix it myself, or better yet have the students do it I will take something that I know is sustainable, that students can actually put their hands on and operate over that white elephant every day of the week.
In reality, this is all moot. No matter the cost, my budget is effectively zero at the moment. But I can hope.
The $40k was a Universal Robots UR3e I believe. The vendor put it on a cart as a portable, self-contained system.