- Joined
- Oct 17, 2007
- Messages
- 4,151
My machines have all mainly been purchased through eBay or craigslist. The thing about either of those sites is that a lot of auction houses and machinery dealers post to one, the other, or both as well, and if you filter by the distance you're willing to drive to pick something up, you start finding quite a few machines to pick through.
I found my knee mill through searching eBay nearest first, and found that it was actually a machinery dealer with a dozen machines or so, located about 2 1/2 hours north of me. Once I found a machine I thought would do, I haggled the price down to include a their freight truck delivery to my house. Having a lift gate and pallet jack made getting the machine into my garage a breeze.
Now, if I had it to do it all over again, I'd probably try to hold out for a machine that had at the very least a DRO (mine did have powered x and y axis, which was nice, though I rarely use the y motor) and maybe even a vise or some tooling. I have a lot of that stuff now, but it's easily double the cost of the machine since I bought it. A DRO is definitely a game changer though, and while I got by without one for a long time, I wouldn't have a mill without one now.
I found my knee mill through searching eBay nearest first, and found that it was actually a machinery dealer with a dozen machines or so, located about 2 1/2 hours north of me. Once I found a machine I thought would do, I haggled the price down to include a their freight truck delivery to my house. Having a lift gate and pallet jack made getting the machine into my garage a breeze.
Now, if I had it to do it all over again, I'd probably try to hold out for a machine that had at the very least a DRO (mine did have powered x and y axis, which was nice, though I rarely use the y motor) and maybe even a vise or some tooling. I have a lot of that stuff now, but it's easily double the cost of the machine since I bought it. A DRO is definitely a game changer though, and while I got by without one for a long time, I wouldn't have a mill without one now.