We have bought and sold 141 horizontal machining centers, build years 1994 to 2025. That is our own record, not a catalog listing — so when we quote your machine, we are pricing something we have traded before.
We have 61 horizontal machining centers listed right now, so we know what the market is paying this month.
Get an offer on your horizontal machining center
Tell us what you have and how to reach you, and we will come back with a route and a number — usually the same day. The make and model of your horizontal machining center are enough to start.
Why sell your horizontal machining center to KD Machinery
A horizontal is bought by its pallet. The pallet decides whether the tombstones and fixtures a shop already owns will move straight onto the machine, and a buyer built around one size will not seriously look at another. 61 of the horizontals we have traded are 400 mm pallet machines, 21 are 500 mm and 16 are 630 mm. Everything else follows from that one decision: 42 of ours carry a 60 ATC magazine and 20 carry 40 ATC, because a horizontal is bought to run a family of parts across a shift with nobody standing at it.
What we buy
Horizontal machining centers with automatic pallet changers, twin pallet machines and full pallet pools, four and five axis horizontals, horizontal boring mills with rotary tables, and complete cells with their tombstones, fixtures and chip handling. Machines under power and machines already disconnected. One machine or a whole department.
What decides what a used horizontal machining center is worth
- Pallet size, which places the machine before any other number does. 61 of ours are 400 mm, 21 are 500 mm and 16 are 630 mm, and a buyer whose tooling is built around one of those sizes will pay a premium for the match.
- The tombstones and fixturing, which sellers routinely leave out of the conversation and which are worth more than they expect. They were made for that pallet and they are useless to you once the machine goes.
- The pallet changer itself, and whether it indexes reliably every time rather than most times. A horizontal that cannot swap pallets unattended has lost the reason it exists.
- Tool magazine capacity. 42 of ours hold 60 ATC and 20 hold 40 ATC, and here a bigger magazine is not a luxury - it is what lets one setup run several parts without a person.
- Spindle speed and condition. 39 of ours run 12,000 RPM and 36 run 15,000 RPM, and a documented rebuild history helps a sale far more than a low hour count nobody can verify.
- Through-spindle coolant and its pressure, plus the chip auger and conveyor. Horizontals are bought for deep and heavy cutting, and chip evacuation is what makes that possible rather than a nice extra.
- The taper, because it decides whether existing holders transfer. 83 of ours are CAT 40, and a buyer with a CAT 50 crib is looking at a different machine entirely.
- Probing and any fourth axis, and crucially whether those options were actually enabled on the control rather than merely fitted to the machine.
How to sell a horizontal machining center
A horizontal sells on evidence that it still runs unattended, which is the whole reason anyone buys one:
- Run a pallet change ten times in front of a camera. If it hesitates once, that is worth knowing before a buyer finds it.
- Cut a test part, measure it, and keep the part, the program and the inspection report together.
- Photograph the control showing spindle hours and the enabled option list, not just the machine.
- Inventory the tombstones, fixtures and holders and decide what is included before you list, because renegotiating this at the end costs goodwill.
- Clear the chip conveyor and coolant tank and show them clean. A horizontal full of old chips reads as a machine nobody maintained.
Selling a horizontal machining center: common questions
Do the tombstones and fixtures go with the machine?
They should, and including them usually raises the total rather than costing you. They were built for that pallet size, so they fit almost nothing else you own, and to a buyer with similar work they remove weeks of fixture making. Held back, they are heavy items with a very thin resale market. If some carry proprietary part geometry you cannot release, separate those and include the rest.
The pallet changer is intermittent. How much does that cost me?
More than the repair almost always does, which is why it is worth chasing. An intermittent changer turns a production machine into a manual one in the buyer's mind, and they price for the worst case because they cannot test it over a week. These faults are frequently a switch, a sensor or hydraulic pressure rather than the mechanism itself. Get it diagnosed, and if it really is the mechanism, say so and price it in.
Is a 400 mm pallet machine easier to sell than a 630 mm one?
It sells faster, because the pool of buyers is larger. 61 of the horizontals we have handled are 400 mm and that is where the volume of work sits. A 630 mm machine sells to fewer people, but they are usually looking for exactly that and are less price sensitive when they find one. Neither is a problem. What costs money is waiting on a 400 mm timetable for a 630 mm machine.
Does through-spindle coolant matter as much as buyers say?
On a horizontal, yes. The work these machines are bought for is deep holes and heavy pockets, and without coolant delivered through the tool the buyer cannot run the cycles they are buying the machine for. If yours has it, state the pressure. If it does not, say so early. It narrows the buyer pool rather than killing the sale, and discovering it late is what kills sales.