It all depends on the shop it came from. I would say a job shop has the most risk of having had crashed the machine. Production situations are usually better from that standpoint, in that there are far fewer setups being done, and if they are a good shop have good programmers, trained setup people, and have worked the bugs out of their setup procedures. I don't care where the machine was used, I can guarantee you that it wasn't used to its full potential, so I wouldn't worry about it having been beat on. My experience in the machine tool world is that any quality machine can be run at "100%" (more likely less than 25% of its capability) day in day out and not have major issues as a result of "running parts". They run into early trouble when way covers, lube lines, and way gibs / truck wipers aren't regularly maintained. Or a crash of any size that big enough to cause dimensional/alignment change. Beyond that, there should be very little maintenance needed. Occasionally you will need bearing rebuilds for your live tooling units, and the turret will likely need a little maintenance from time to time, but that is usually mainly just o-rings and seals, and cleaning as a result of coolant geting places it shouldn't be.
My experience with the Hardinge lathes is that they are great machines, albeit it's been 12-15 years since I was working with them, overall still I would say go for it. They used to make and still do make some of the best headstocks in the industry. FWIW, any company that is as versed and positively regarded in grinding and hard turning as Hardinge is no doubt is capable and does make machines which are an order of magnitude better than much of the competition. Are they powerful workhorses like Okuma, and Mori, maybe not, are they as accurate and trouble free when maintained properly, definitely. Oh and most importantly, being a US company, the maintenance procedures are easier to follow and the documentation is what I used to consider gold standard. It was my benchmark for years, and sadly disappointed me when I started working with Japanese machines and their lack of clear english procedures, such as Hardinge used to put out. They have gotten better over the years, but are still lacking.
