Ah understood. I think the comments from CT, earlier were:-

"hour glassed dovetails on the Z axis,"

Okay, that would be a bit of a deal-breaker. I understand different importers do some level of their own QC, or have at least established a quality control with the OEM. Arc may have done some of this (though for a low-end mill like this - and please remember I do have one, I'm not having a pop) - there's a limit to how much time they'd spend on it. In my experience - I've had no problems at all with the dovetails on Z, though I'll admit to not having measured them. I don't see any significant movement at different heights. If I get chance I might DTI it just to check.


"rough areas in the casting,"

None seen on mine o the machined surfaces. As for the rest of the casting - unless it's structural then who cares?

"a few small voids here and there in the casting,"

Not noticed. At least not enough to worry me, and I did get pretty intimate with the column. I've drilled more holes than there were voids, certainly!

"and most holes and pins seemed to be hand drilled and tapped as they were all over the place"

Yes, and this is the pain-in-the-arse - the dowel holes are almost certainly hand-drilled - I was trying to transfer all major holes onto paper, to measure and transfer into components into Fusion for CNC conversion and - yeah, no rhyme-no-reason other than being eye-balled/hand-drilled. But the main mounting points are, from memory, accurate. It's the work of a couple of minutes to measure yours. At the end of the day it just means that any conversion you have to measure twice, cut once. If the dowels worry you then drill and taper-ream new dowel holes once you have end-plates in place (from memory the only pins were on the end plates).