You forgot to mention that that one cost nearly twice as much at around $2200 (depending on exchange rate). Again, everyone here seems to apply the same standards to the Grizzly as they are applying to "the same thing" by other importers, but fail to consider that the price is not the same. You also cherry picked the images to show what you want people to believe, but you missed the image below where clearly there is similar finish to the grizzly in the middle of the travel on the right side (a less ideal location for that kind of flaw IMHO). From what it looks like in this image, the "scraping" is more of a decoration in this case than a functional scraping, or the following image would not have the "bastard file" appearance with a few scrapes removed here and there. Really, the only reason it isn't the same as the Grizzly is that they already wore the tops of some areas of the tooling marks down for you. Those are sharp tooling marks with occasional areas scraped:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attach...4&d=1415912622
Also, here's a quote regarding the accuracy of the same ways Dingus showed his measurements of: "I found that the under side of the slide ways where very stiff and in bad condition ! I had to Lap them all in to remove dents and odd issues ! I ran the DTI across the table and it was reading -0.005 mm across the full x travel.
I then did the Y and got +0.012" (though hard to say if it's the "table" or the ways since he was talking about ways in the same paragraph). I double checked the thread to be sure he's talking about the Y axis as in front to back and at one point he refers to the X axis brackets while depicting the table mounted motor. So his Y axis has a +/- .006" tolerance compared to Dingus's +/- .0005" tolerance. That's likely over the same distance, but even if the AMA25LV was measured over the full bed length, it would still be out of true by three to four times as much. If the "scraped" surface were a true hand scraped surface, it would be a tighter tolerance than the Grizzly, so it is clearly just done for the look of a scraped surface to imply that it's better, not to true anything up. If the measurement is accurate on the AMA25LV, I don't think there is a soul here that would take that over the one Dingus measured, especially for nearly twice the money.
Another thing to point out is that as I suggested before, the length of the carriage has a great deal to do with the final accuracy of the machine, rendering some of these issues a moot point. Even with three to four times worse tolerance, the AMA25LV was measured to produce an assembled tolerance to produce part of what seems to be about +/-.0005" (though he only mentions "X" and "Z" measurements and it's hard to say if it's backlash or tramming). I stand behind what I said earlier, which is that the machine should be assembled and measured to see what the tolerance of the part produced can be. The level of minutia that is being discussed here on a $1200 milling machine seems out of proportion to what should be expected from it and the parts that would be produced are probably just fine.
The comparisons from one brand to another have so far been really anecdotal and don't represent an honest attempt at apples to apples from what I see. The grass is always greener, but as the photo shows above and the measurements bear out, it's also easy to pick and choose what people think is how it should be while ignoring what it is. For a $1200 milling machine, if you can get smooth operation with good part tolerances consistently when used as the manufacturer designed it to be used, then you got what you paid for. If you want more than that (which I believe would not improve the parts produced at all), be willing to scrape it, lap it, etc. yourself or put more money into it having a machinist bring it up to the finish quality you expect, which I think is not an unreasonable proposition for what is being paid for these things. After all, you're spending a lot of money on the conversion itself, so some amount of budget for bringing the finish quality up to your expectations probably needs to be accounted for. Given what it appears the quality of the AMA25LV is, and likely the PM25, my personal feeling is that I'd rather pay less for the Grizzly and plan to spend a little making it meet my own standards. The others are just as far out of tolerance or poorly finished here or there, so hopefully people will stop kidding themselves and plan for it.