When I learnt that the machine was not too far from my place (well, some 250 kms) I decided to undertake the journey and have a look at it.

The main bed ways seemed to be in quite good shape, but closer inspection made it obvious that the machine had a number of defects. The vertical head had been mounted by the time I came to look, but the bevel gears gave some nasty noises when I turned the spindle over. I also found that the taper of the horizontal spindle did not run quite true.
And I learnt that the digital readout module (which was detached from the machine) would not work properly.

The pro's were that the machine seemed otherwise well kept, and having spent its life in a company making small scale railway trains it did not seem to have had an unduly hard life.

Anyway I went back home deciding I would only buy it if the seller offered me a substantial discount. He seemed a bit disconcerted when I told him about my findings, but we did not come to an agreement.

Thus I made the seller a last offer which he grudgingly accepted.

The seller had left the machine at the place where he had bought it, and I learnt it was my job to go there and make it ready for transport. A good advice from Franz Singer (in my view, the No.1 Deckel repairers in Southern Germany, I can only recommend their services) told me not to put the machine on a standard Euro palette to avoid disappointment with the movers telling me it tipped it over on the lorry...

So I made a special palette from stout timber, measuring 1.25m * 1.25m, making sure that the machine did not protrude over the palette anywhere. The 35mm top planks allowed to bolt up the machine on its original mounting lugs which made it stand quite safely.

I can only recommend this procedure; the cost was about 30 EUR and an hour of work, just try to work out how much much more time and money it takes to repair only a minor transport damage!

I dismantled and cleaned it and found the mechanical parts in quite nice condition.

Mind you, you can always get a new pair from Deckel, but this will set you back by a hefty 950 Euros, so I was rather pleased to find the gears in order!

I found that the head had just been loosely assembled before selling the machine, for what reason ever. And the noise was just due to very poor mesh adjustment of the bevel gears. I readjusted them, monitoring the contact area with engineer's blue, and they ran smoothly again.

The T-nuts are one of the main problems with Deckel machines: Most of the T-bolt heads and nuts are just too small, and will damage the castings if they are done up too tightly. Once this has happened, things get worse and worse, as the pressure on the remaining surface under the bolt head gets very high when a part of it is already crumbled.

Fortunately the land on one side was still pretty intact, and the damages on the other side were not too deep. I managed to clean up the slot by boring and facing it using the Wohlhaupter head on my trusty FP1.

I will of course have to make a special kidney-shaped plug to close up the hole...

Incidentally, I made all the nuts from 42CrMo4 steel, pre-heat treated to a tensile strength of 650 N/mm².

Guess what I found when dismantling the swivelling table:
yes, damaged T-slots.

But now I already knew what to do...