Used lathe or mill

[CMS3900]

Around here a bridgeport can be found pretty easily. $500-5000 depending on the tooling package and what's on it. Some have older Anilam CNC packages. We had a Crusader II Bridgeport in our shop that we bought new and did a lot of work over the years with it. Lathes are pretty plentiful just depends on size, condition, tooling ect.. Cost really comes down to how far someones willing to travel for the deal. Power requirements depend on the machine. We have a 220v single phase MSC mill in our shop which is nice for when I don't want to turn the rotary phase converter on. Good places to hunt are auctions as said above, machinery liquidators, and just calling machine shops to see if they have anything or know of anything for sale.

 

[Drew Riley]

Good places to hunt are auctions as said above, machinery liquidators, and just calling machine shops to see if they have anything or know of anything for sale.

Yup. Don't forget about eBay as well. Search by "nearest distance" and that may show you something in your own backyard. Nearly all will be "local pickup only" unless it's a machinery dealer. Sometimes it will even be an auction with no reserve, which means you might actually get a decent deal. That said, I would still contact the seller about taking a look at it first.

All that said, I bought my surface grinder via an eBay auction, just based on pictures and description. It was about 30 miles up the road.
I found my mill on eBay as well, but noticed it was sold through a used machinery dealer, so I called him up and haggled the price. I basically negotiated free delivery via their freight truck from about 150 miles up the road. This machine was bought based on pics and description alone, though I wouldn't recommend that for everything.

I bought a mill vise a while back from a guy that had a nice Kondia Clausing mill similar to mine. The shop he worked at was throwing it away. It was still quite functional, but they were upgrading and making room for new equipment.

A lot of times, just driving past a machine shop, you might see some old machines sitting in the back lot collecting rust. If a company is paying bills with a machine, it often makes more sense to upgrade to a new one than to pay for the old one to be fixed.