The machine tool in the fleabay ad is obviously a bench mill that was modified for one specific production operation. The word "butchery" comes to mind in describing what the end result is. I am sure that in its present configuration, the mill was used for that one specific production operation, and when the job or run was done with, the mill was bunted off into storage to gather dust. It's the kind of thing that turns up at shop auctions, where odd lots of production tooling are lumped together and go for pocket change. It is also the kind of thing that I used to see sitting in the windows of the old used machine tool dealers along Centre Street in NYC in the 1960's. There was a shelf directly inside the store windows, and instead of "window dressing" in a formal sense, the dealers would often throw whatever odd small production tooling and small specialized machine tools onto that window shelf. There might be a small chucker or small high speed drill press, along with heaps of odd tooling, jigs, fixtures, a half dozen large dial indicators left over from WWII production work... the stuff would gather dust and never seemed to be sold or changed out.
My guess is that little production mill was one of those items which, in an earlier era, would have wound up gathering dust in some used machine tool dealer's store window. With the advent of fleabay and aerosol cans of paint, what would have been an anchor in a very static window display suddenly becomes "rare" and gets a "rebuild" with a coat of garish paint and gets a price tag that is astronomical. The words that come to mind for this fleabay listing are "delusional" and "insane". Clearly, the person(s) who cooked up this listing latched onto the name "van Norman" and perhaps, being machine tool pirates of sorts, figured that van Norman made larger milling machines with universal heads, so this had to be "rare". Any right-thinking person with a smattering of machine shop or machine tool knowledge and a bit of ethics in their makeup would know this particular mill has next to no practical use as a regular machine tool.
"Caveat emptor"- "let the buyer beware" is the real watchword for anyone browsing fleabay and showing any interest in buying stuff off it. A person with next to no machine shop knowledge, starting their home machine shop might see this little abortion and be tempted- supporting P.T. Barnum's adage: "There's a sucker born every minute". With a bright blue paint job, the van Norman name, the small size and the word "rare", the sellers are trolling for a sucker.
In answer to Digger Doug's question about the drawbar: the whole machine is a massive modification of a small bench mill. The arbor needs a drawbar and the normal location and configuration of drawbar are blocked by the shaft coupling for the spindle drive. Possibly, the drawbar issue was addressed by making a shouldered bushing to fit in the end of the spindle. This bushing could have been counterbored for a socket-head screw. The socket head screw would then be coupled to the shortened drawbar with a threaded "************ coupling" or simply welded to a sleeve coupling. The largest diameter of the bushing would be a touch smaller (or the same diameter as) the tail end of the spindle. The shaft coupling for the motor drive could then be slid onto the tail end of the spindle and made up.
Given the whole nature of this machine, I would not be surprised if the arbor was tack-welded into the spindle. With the original drawbar intact and sucking the arbor tight into the spindle, the hackmeisters probably tacked the arbor to the spindle. Once this was done, the drawbar was removed and the coupling for the motor drive made up on the tail end of the spindle.
We have a butchered abortion of a mill made by hackmeisters, now offered for sale on fleabay by schlockmeisters.
