Another view is that the BIG machines, once set up, offer long cuts with plenty of sit down time; I liked big cylindrical and surface grinders, horizontal boring mills, and especially the planer, which in my apprenticeship shop was 6 ft. X 6ft. X 15ft. The boring mills were 5" bar G&Ls with 6ft. of vert. travel; lots of gravy jobs! At the time, they had a #5 Cincinnati horiz. mill; that was a pain! with a 12" high platform around the machine, when the table was about on center with the spindle, it was nearly chin high, so one needed stools to reach anything; this machine was about WW-1 vintage and was not in nice condition by a long way, everyone was glad to see the last of it when it was converted for the job of serrating track plates for San Francisco's BART rapid transit system, except of course the guy who had to run it! after that it was scrapped.
