Noahjlb;
Perhaps it should be noted that everyone has their own likes and dislikes and therefore you are going to get a lot of opinions. No one but you can make the decision that you are asking for help on but you. It must be your own research and I suggest you check out as many dealers in your own area as possible.
As far as my experiance, I looked for three years checking out tradeshows and getting demos at vendors shops. It took me that long to convince the company owner that we needed one. As far as the owner of our company was concerned, price was the most important thing for him with the exception that he demanded a new machine. He did not want to take a chance on an old one. These two factors limited our choices considerably.
It came down to weighing price and options over power and ridgidity. The Hass tool room mill is nice but it only has about 12" of Y axis travel. I build a lot of parts that are larger than that so that ruled out Hass and the Bridgeport knee mills. When I looked at the type of options I felt we needed all of the large frame VMC's were outside of our budget. I did decide early on that the bed mill was far superior to the knee mill for our use. If you are only going to make one or two parts a day or use the mill infrequently then manually adjusting the knee will not be a problem for you. I on the other hand make 6 to 10 different parts a day and I need all the capability I can get.
Now the moral of the story, I wound up getting a bed mill from Atrump with a Centroid M400 control. I got the tool preseter and the touch probe options and I can tell you that I love them both. Of all of the controls that I researched the Centroid was the easiest to use and the most user friendly. The Proto trak was a little clumsy and I did not like the graphic capability as well. The only other machine that would work for what we wanted and had as good of a control are the mills from Milltronics. I actually prefered the Milltronics machine but they cost more and the touch probe from Renishaw was just to expensive.
I am very happy with the machine we have, it has paid for itself within the first year and I would gladly recomend it to anyone who does not need the speed and power of a full production mill.
I know this has been a long letter but maybe I have answered some of your questions. If you want to talk to me about some other machines or some of the things that I have researched I will be glad to speak to you personaly or better yet start a new thread and we can converse here on this board.
Best of luck to you
Charles Blair
678-287-2431 7am-3pm est
[email protected]