Are you purchasing a mill? If so what kind are you looking for?
If anyone is looking for machining equipment, I bought my stuff from Penn Tool Co.
I got a
mill like this one (but 9x48) and a
lathe like this one (but 12x36) with DROs, much tooling, and home delivery for $10,000 some years ago. Great stuff. Not CNC, but with patience, can yield some great results. They've got CNCs based on bridgeport type vertical mills for $20k.
If I had to do it over, I'd get a
lathe more like this one. Key features I'd look for are "no change gears required", a foot brake, 14" swing, and the biggest spindle bore you can possibly afford.
When I got the YCL-1236GH for $2100, none of these others were on the market. Getting >2" spindle bore started at $10,000. And to cut metric threads is a total pain -- there are all kinds of gears to change out to get the speeds correct. AND each metric thread pitch has a different set of change gears.
And then there's the fact that even doing "little" parts for motorcycles, I've essentially gone beyond the capacity of the 12" swing on mine. Length isn't an issue for anything I've done. If I ever get another one, it'd probably be something with
specs along these lines.
Chris
