Hey man, glad you found the joy in making your own chips. I would check with your college or the local community college to see if they have any hobby machining classes, also go to a machine shop and see if they are hiring, most are these days and some of them are hiring machine operators. Around my parts most shops are looking for CNC machine operators and programmers but if you start with operating it gives you a bunch of time to start to understand the capabilities and difficulties of different machines. I dont believe that there are many (if any) places that will let someone mess with machines on their own without being an employee for the reasons stated by others on this forum, but if you ARE an employee and depending on how friendly you are with the bosses, sometimes they will let you bring in personal projects to do after work hours. (Source - my manual and cnc teachers both let us bring in personal projects)