Advise on buying used mills and lathe

I have 3 mills, soon to be adding the 4th. Today Im fabing up some assemblies for a buddy. several hundred of them, removable table leg assemblies for his sisters catering service. Ive got two band saws going cutting down the various round, square, L and flat stock, two mills and a drill press doing hole patterns and deburring/champhering and Ill be drilling and tapping on a mill soon as I get the other stuff done. Then welding them together

If you can keep it..keep it. If you need the money..sell it and get another beater later for a heavy dut drill press.

Gunner

Okay, so I'm late and catching up, but "FlaMtnBkr" wrote on 9 Jul 2006 10:41:46 -0700 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

Its one of those things where if you don't have one, you'll wish you did; and if you do have one, you'll wish you didn't. I've looked at some of the mini-multimills (small lathe, with mill attachment & drill press.) rather nifty till you realize that if you have one configuration setup, you'll need the other "for just a moment". Which is when you wish for a separate 'other' machine.

Then there is the "I have one, so I can do that" factor. Buddy of mine was considering buying a leaf shredder/chipper. I asked him "How often did you need one in the past?" and he responded that if he'd had one, he could have taken care of a lot more 'problems' without having the leaves (etc) pile up. You start out with one main and one "spare" and pretty soon, if you're doing any kind of production, you've got a main machine, a second machine, and no spare. So you get a third, and "lather, rinse, repeat." as the saying goes.

I guess I will keep both to start with. Hopefully I will be able to put them to good use and they will go hand in hand with my welding shop. If for some reason I am not using it enough to pay for itself or justify the space then I will look at selling it.

Thank you for all the replies. This has been my first interaction with this NG and it has been quite positive!

Ryan