cr234 - what you want to do is possible. I picked up a Bridgeport VMC 1000 for $5000 CAD, it needed a bit of work, but not too much just to make chips (beware that machining is an endless way to suck a little more money, one tool at a time). There are good post processors for my machine, DX32 - but I have simply stuck with coding directly. I appreciate that the real power is in doing the solid model and programming too paths, but as a manual machining guy for many years, pretending it is a manual machine, except instead of cranking a handle, I just send a line of code - is really awesome. I am steadily building ever more involved programs. Even though I'm a total beginner, it is not difficult to get to the point that I'm doing things that would be much harder to do on one of the manual milling machines. For example I made some two piece jaws for a big 3J chuck - I know it is possible to generate a good approximation of the scroll teeth on the back of the jaw using a manual mill, but it is a lot of work. On a CNC it is two lines of code to create the shape, then repeated 8 times with the origin translated - so I made two full sets of the jaws.
Getting an old industrial machine (this one I got is a 1998) means there is lots of capability, heavy, rigid, plenty of power, full enclosure, flood coolant, tool changer, 4 axis. It does take up quite a bit of floor space, but then you didn't say that was a problem and it just fits in with the capability of my residential electrical supply. You also didn't say that power was a problem (you can expect that you will need a good 3 phase system). So I suggest you start looking around, learn what you local used market is like (it took me about 3 years to find this VMC - I looked at quite a few and passed them by, but I learnt from every one of them).
Be patient, start looking. What you are thinking of really is out there.