62" X 30" Starrett AA Surface Plate $2000 (San Francisco, CA)

A CMM stand is not a surface plate, and is not necessarily made or maintained as flat as a surface plate needs to be. It may (or may not) take considerable work to get it calibrated and certified to the accuracy needed for a machinist's reference surface plate. It also probably weighs around 3000# or more, not something that will be moved around easily. With those issues, and perhaps others, it may turn out to be difficult to sell, and the current price does not show that... Large surface plates often go for very low prices considering their size, and large and heavy tooling stands are essentially heavy tombstones to machinists.
 
Used surface plates are like safes and machine tools. Up to a certain size they are worth progressively more money, past that point the price begins to decline rapidly due to the difficulty and expense of moving and housing them. In the extreme you are lucky to give them away. Unlike safes and lathes, surface plates have no scrap value.
 
I've used CMM bases before. they are built to exceed normal manual surface plate accuracy. Tom Lipton did a video on this. I had access to a DMM granite base until recently, it was the best surface plate I ever used.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top