I've been working to many hours- don't even recall writing this post a few years back. I have verified though that Mattison indeed was brought down by a lawsuit on an ancient woodworking machine. There's a company in Illinois, the name escapes me at the moment, that rebuilds Mattisons, sells some replacement parts, and has several of the ex Mattison workers staffing the place. He verified the lawsuit "rumor". I think he said it happened in the late nineties. Really a tragedy, that our legal system, with peoples skewed logic, can bring down a company, for injuries from operating a fifty year old machine. If that logic really holds, then anybody operating a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler that's fifty years old and has an accident because of something breaking on the car, should be able to sue the car manufacturer. Frankly I despise lawyers and our system, that is totally unrealistic.
I never did answer Milacrons question as to why I wanted such a big grinder. VersaMil doesn't just manufacture "itsy bitsy" machines. I bought it so I could grind up to ten foot long feed tables, that I want to make in conjunction with much larger machining heads. The largest mill in my line, weighs 10,000 pounds. That's not really big, but it certainly isn't itsy bitsy. The other thing I wanted a larger grinder for, was to be able to stack the table up with parts and do lots of them at once. Instead of grinding 1- 24 inch long feedtable at a time, I can do 18. Being a really small shop, if I want to make any money, I've got to be able to produce parts in quantities, not wasting time making one part at a time. Plus it's just a cool really big machine, that I just couldn't live without. Some people like Deckels, others like real American beef!