I know this is an older post but for new shoppers, I wanted to give my perspective as I've owned and run my 12Z mill, converted to CNC for many years now, (since 2009). Wow, time flies. I bought it when the company was Industrial Hobbies. It is essentially the same machine as in the OP's video, except CNC'd. I think that separating the facts about the basic mill from the anecdotal quality example(s) is important.
This is by no means a $30K highly-polished, super-massive machine, if you could even find that for $30K. But it has been a workhorse for me for about 10 years. I have used it 70% business, 30% hobby. It does have some minor casting voids in unimportant areas and the y-axis was stiff at first. Some stoning of a high spot on the very end of one of the ways and the gibs (maybe 20 minutes or so) fixed that up. As with all these machines I spent a day doing preservative clean-up, alignment, tightening here and there, etc. I also did my own CNC conversion using IH's kit. The CNC kit was outstanding in quality, produced by IH in CT. The conversion was no big deal although a bit nerve-wracking because you have to carefully drill and tap some holes in the castings to mount things. I use the mill for wood, plastic, aluminum, and steel. The drive-train is relatively noisy and you can find people that have modified their machine for a belt drive. I just live with the noise. It's fine. I did not see the gear lever vibration shown in the video, that seems abnormal. For years I've been thinking I will tram the Z column better as I imagine a couple of mil shim would make it perfect but I've never gotten around to it. It has done good work as-is. The only time I notice it is if I do a large diameter cut with a fly cutter. Maybe this is the year I finally get around to precisely tramming it. Yeah, probably not.
My biggest complaint about the machine? A very slow, probably a couple of ounces over 10 years leak of oil around the spindle bearing. The drip seems to have slowed down over the years. I just put a piece of cardboard on the table in case a drip or two happens if it sits idle for a while. Due to Murphy, it always seems to want to have a drip when I have an HDPE part in the mill, staining the part. So, take it apart, replace seals/bearings, etc? Naw, the cardboard works.
Do I wish I had a stouter mill, a knee mill? Sometimes. However, this mill has accomplished everything I have asked it to do. The extended work envelope has been invaluable to me. It is slower going in steel than on a larger mass machine but it has done well. For softer materials, I rigged up a mount for a porter-cable router to get higher RPMs. It just bolts on the side of the head opposite the quill feed handle. The router extension works quite well for plastic and wood especially and ok for aluminum even.
From my perspective, I got a huge bang for the buck with this style of mill. I still just run Mach 3 and drive the axis with the parallel ports of an old PC. I may improve that at some point after I retire. I think this 12Z mill will do most of what I need for the next couple of decades. So, $8K / ~30 years is about $260/year for a decent, large envelope CNC mill. That's not bad, especially since my first job paid for a good chunk of it. Some spend much more than that on lattes. I have spent probably as much on end mills, collets, slitting saws, tool holders, indexer, vises, chucks, etc. since then. So there's that... This is not necessarily a cheap hobby.
* Gene, one of the owners of the former IH company, was still around when I bought my mill. If anyone ever spoke with Gene then they know that he was a great, easy-going guy that liked helping out his customers. He helped me figure out a couple of things during the CNC conversion, probably on the phone for an hour. I barely knew him and even I miss the guy.