I have always heard Blanchards are disgusting power hungry behemoths incapable of holding .005" tolerance on parts. No kidding. Call the two Portland grinding shops with Blanchards and ask them to hold a thou. They act like you kicked their dog or something.
So i was trying to do Blanchardy stuff without a Blanchard for awhile. Stupid me finally gave in and bought a cheap, nice Blanchard. Turns out-
Blanchards are not very big. My 18-30 is the same footprint as my 12x24 surface grinder. They do use power I'm sure, but mine starts up no problem on my RPC 3 phase. They're a little gross I spose, but no worse than any CNC really. There's a lot less mist than I expected. And hands down, a Blanchard beats any CNC mill for stock prep or cosmetic finishing.
So basically all the advice I have gotten about Blanchards was from guys who had never run one.
I would say it would be a pretty shitty job to just stand in front of a Blanchard and load/unload parts all day everyday, but that's true for a lot of machines.
