When our unit was looking for a machine, we had certain criteria that were required in the purchase order. The most important ones were that we needed full CNC with lathe and mill capabilities and the unit needed to be compact and relatively portable . Compactness and portability eliminated seperate units, as well as the added expense of doubling the costs for CNC and DRO systems. That left the 3 in 1 machines as our choice. After a lot of research, we settled on the Shopmaster Bridgemill with 4 axes servo CNC, Ball screws and DRO. The Bridgemill had the milling capacity we needed without the lathe chuck interference you mention, plus the CNC, DRO and ball screws were installed when we received the unit. The Shopmaster has a clever bench design that utilizes the legs as part of the shipping crate structure, and the whole thing can be broken down, crated and loaded on a truck in about an hour. This was a big advantage if we needed to move forward or back ( NEVER HAPPENED) on short notice.  |