When I purchased lathes and mills, other than the specs. the first thing I consider is service and parts. I have seen way too many of these import lathes where purchasers have been left with no support and no parts (like Bolton and Weiss in years past). Parts are often not interchangeable, even if machines appear to be similar and many distributors will only sell parts for their machines. You would be much better off with something like the Weiss WBL290Fwhich is sold by DRO Pros for close to the same price, comes with a 5 year warranty and you get some discount on the DRO or install your own for $200. I do about 30% of my work as metric, with a DRO you can read whatever numbers you prefer. Threading is a bit different, I personally would not go with either of these machines because the number of change gears on these models. There is the PM1228 which offers a bit more and the foot print is still pretty decent, 1236T is also nice but a bit bigger. If you want a metric version, I would contact DRO Pros, QMT or for that matter Weiss USA and see if they can import a metric version. At this price level, I do not see the value of trying to import a machine to save a few hundred dollars. I imported a major brand mill from Canada, it had a number of significant issues/defects, many of which never got fixed under "warranty". The few parts that I did get took many months, during which the mill was not usable. Others with the same mill, and also those with Sieg mills had the motor drive fail. The cost of the replacement board was over $1000, so a decent warranty and service is peace of mind even if you do not use it.
