There's some good and bad advice in this thread, but for the moment, your situation boils down to used American or new Import.
I faced the same thing about five years ago, with the additional modifier of being in Alaska. Due to shipping distances and weight, there's relatively few machine tools up here, but with a fairly high ratio of do-it-yourselfers and ex-oilfield types, what few there are are in fairly high demand.
Finding a local mill, then, was a simple binary issue: It'd either be cheap, but worn to junk, or it'd be in good condition and priced appropriately. 'Appropriate' meaning about what a new import costs for a similar machine.
I would have very much preferred a Bridgeport or equivalent "name brand", such as Lagun or older Rockwell or Millrite. But I'd have had to buy it sight-unseen, based largely on lo-res digital photos and the word of the seller. eBay is chock-full of machine-tool sellers that slap on a coat of fresh paint and even run a power scraper/flaker over the ways to make it
look unworn, and then ask premium prices.
With a mag base and a dial indicator, I could find the wear and determine the condition, if I were there in person, but the travel to do so would have cost $1,000 to $1,200 including renting a car and a night or two in a hotel. That's not bad if I were buying a $50,000 CNC, but pretty steep for a $2,000 Bridgeport.
And, of course, what if it turns out that machine is crap? I've just spent a grand for a two-day vacation.
Bottom line is, I do NOT recommend buying a used machine tool sight-unseen. If I can see it, indicate it, start it, crank some handles, maybe even make a few chips, then yes, I'd by far rather have a good American over even the best Import. But if you can't try it, it's buying a pig in a poke.
I eventually went with a full-size Grizzly Bridgeport clone. It appears they don't carry this exact model anymore (G4037) but it was made in Taiwan rather than mainland China, it's
very good quality, and I've had basically zero problems after five years of moderate, but almost constant, use.
The smaller benchtop mills are of course not as good- they're not as powerful, not as rigid, don't have some of the features. The Chinese stuff (as opposed to the Taiwanese) is just not quite up to the same build quality.
But, they're still very capable machines when you work within their limitations, and after seeing how many people on this board think it's A-okay to mill "just a little bit" with a Harbor Freight drill press and a cheap import X/Y table, you'll be
miles ahead of them.
And as noted above, there's basically no American equivalent to a benchtop mill. There's a rare few out there, like the little Deckel with a vertical head, or the Millrite that's damn near a half-size Bridgeport, but you're again looking at a used machine with fifty years of questionable maintnance on it, plus the competition of all the other home-shop guys that also want the smaller machines that fit in a garage or basement.
And thanks to that demand, the worn-out small American machine is going to cost
more than a roughly-equivalent import.
All that said, don't worry too much about buying an import just because it's an import. Buy from a good name brand, like Grizzly or Jet, rather than Harbor Freight or Northern Hydraulics. Grizzly actually stocks repair parts, has a very good warranty service, and their techs actually know what they're doing.
The other secret to imports is that they virtually all come out of the same factory. Jet just has theirs sprayed white, Grizzly paints theirs green, Harbor Freight uses red, and so on. BUT... the better sellers, Grizzly especially, get the "cream of the crop"- they require, and pay for, better fitting, higher class bearings, more finishing, more attention to detail.
The parts that don't pass muster for Griz and Jet get used for, say, Sieg machines. Parts that aren't good enough for Sieg get used in Encos, Enco leftovers get used in Harbor Freight. (Generally speaking- I'm supposing a bit.)
So it's worth spending that little extra for the better machine to start with, plus the warranty support.
Doc.
