I think that its a super valuable experience for a student to be able to do this and show that they understand the design process as a whole and know how to do real user testing.
I had to make a stud finder for a 3rd year project, part of which was building the pcb for sound, light etc. feedback and a controller so that we could test how usable the design was. Getting responses on a working prototype from people around the uni and making design changes based on those responses made the project far more realistic, and I definitely learnt a lot about making something functional.
On the desktop IM machine ( which I think is also a good idea) an innovation lab here was 3d printing successful tools from Nylon (I think) rather than machining them, but the prints are from a 250k objet printer which puts the material costs outside of what the average student can afford.
Ferrari bucket? 
Reminds me of all the carbon fibre trinkets than luxury car brands sell.