Vertical Mill

Here's the Hurco I bought for the $1200. Just keep looking and asking around your area. One will pop up at the right price. 

Sorry for Dad in the photos. 

What I call dirty milling.

Tom

Mike

Alot of good advise here already!!

Here is my best advise after using and repairing so many makes of Vertical Milling Machines over the past 40+ years.  Size matters!!!  Forget the knee mills, pretty useless for any head work...the table movement will just not help your accuracy.  I would personally buy nothing but a Bridgeport Brand machine......I am just not a fan of import clones, newer ones I understand are pretty decent, but parts are always my concern.  You can buy anything for a Bridgeport, they are lots of folks make spares of the common repair parts.  A shop I worked at when I was very young had 3 XLO (Ex-Cell-O) made in Canada, we had so many problems with the head and getting parts was such a problem, we sold all of them and bought used Series 1, Variable Speed Machines.   I literally grew up with a V-Ram Step Pulley Machine with a 9 x 36 table and 9 inch Y axis travel, one shot oiler and no power feeds, Bridgeport Vise.   It was single phase a gently used, from a flood that got up to the table......that machine taught me what to buy and look for when I bought one.....I only wanted to do this once.

I found a Series 1 Variable Speed Machine in the local paper (Baltimore) at a tool shop that was down sizing, still under power.....make sure it it still under power, the heads can be VERY expensive to fix when heavily worn.  It had a 9 x 48 table, 12" Y axis movement, X Axis Power feed, one shot oiler, R-8 Spindle, chrome ways, Kurt Vise with swivel base, 2 large boxes of R-8.....freshly serviced by Bridgeport Field Service with new belts and bushings on the motor drive for $3000 (1995) and best off it is a 1982 model.   The key things you need to look for what tooling comes with it.....just look up what a Kurt D675 vise and swivel base runs these days!!!   R-8 spindle tooling is so versatile, unless you were doing heavy work, stick with R-8, Cat 40 adapters are expensive and so is direct mount tooling.     Even all the hold down tooling based on 5/8" table slots are super inexpensive and will save you tons of money......there is a wide range Bridgeports.....or check out the Brand X, the lack of parts and support on brand X scares me that I wasted money.   I have just about every attachment they made for my Bridgeport, found them over a lot of years at auctions for great prices.....like 2 different head spacers, to get more z axis clearance, horizontal milling attachment for slotting, slab milling, dividing heads (12 and 15") and horizontal tombstones for each, 2 Kurt D675 vises, X and Y Servo Brand Turbo Drives, Z axis digital readout, Acu-Rite Master-MP X-Y Digital Readout, Ball Screws for the X and Y Axis's........I upgraded all drives and digitals as I got more jobs.   BUT if you can get all that on a good machine, you are way ahead.....look up what this stuff costs, some has gone up and some has gone down since I put my machine to its current condition.  The digital read outs are about 1/3 the price they used to be.....

a full up Bridgeport is only 2000#, but you can easily break it down to much lighter chunks and get it home in a few pick up loads or on a car trailer......just get the machine bed down as low as you can and turn the head upside down or at least 90 degrees from vertical.........the bed come off very easy too.  I can send you a copy of the Bridgeport book on set up and such if that helps you.   I brought mine home in the bed of a 92 Ford F-350 Super Duty!!.......no matter what they are still top heavy.

I hope this helps you, you enough budget at $7K to buy a very nice machine.....with some good tooling.