[RP Designs]

Looking at possibly purchasing this mill. I just got some pictures of the ways and to me they appear pretty worn. Not having a ton of experience with knee mills I thought I would solicit your opinions. So what do you think?

[MattTheNoob]

It looks like there is some scoring present, but you can also still see some of the original scraping (that is the little cressent moon marks on the ways, know as frosting or flaking). Scraping is a good thing. Scoring is a bad thing, usually caused by a chip getting between the bearing surfaces and riding back and forth untill it wears a groove.

I've seen much worse. I'd run it.

[Starleper1]

Doesn't look to bad IMO. Unless you buy a brand new machine you will always have them bastard tight spots at either ends of the travel, only because you don't use that part of the bed/carrage as often as the middle portion.

[handlewanker]

One can't be too fussy when buying a second hand machine.

Adjust the jibs crefully a bit at a time, running the table to the various ends etc, and try to get the ends as close as possible without jamming, (cos' theyre the unworn bits), and if the centre of the slide area is so wobbly as to give a distinct table movement, then as a last resort just apply a bit of table lock to make the table run closer to the vees when actually machining around the centre area.

Failing this if the slides are so worn that the above remedies fail, it means stripping the table off and having the various slide vees on table and knee recut and scraped, a bit costly, but if the machine is cheap enough it might be cost effective.
Ian.

[RP Designs]

Thanks, actually the cost of this machine was a bit prohibitive to add re-scraping and a retrofit. I wound up passing on it and purchased another machine with a dead control which (fingers crossed) will finally be here tomorrow.