I have a 1979 Safan hydraulic 2.5mtrx 4mm capacity took me ages to find it sadly a lot of the good guillotines have been exported by a certain dealer!! Cost me £1500 including transport! Cost me that again to get it running as both rams needed seals etc. Still needs work ongoing but it cuts fairly clean and accurate enough for my needs.
there’s always some for sale at auctions but wouldn’t recommend this route if you’ve never brought from one before advantages can be cheap. Disadvantage no idea what your buying at all
there’s a few specialist dealers that can source what you want or might have it in advantages -hopefully it’s a good machine and they can get it to you
disadvantage it’s not a cheap way in
factor in transport it’s not cheap especially if you need hiabs and it positioned
and factor in repairs again not cheap depending on what you buy there’s not many engineers about fairly safe with Edward Pearson but most will need to travel etc and it soon adds up some stuff is fairly alright to do if your mechanically minded
to add don’t think about getting a Carter or similar brand new for £12k I think they are cheap for a reason!!!
I’ve owned and rebuilt mechanical and hydraulic
My main preference is steel construction
Really don’t like Edwards direct drive under cranks
Soft spot for Pearson and Elga
Pratt are old but excellent and most seem to be cast iron
Cincinnati high speed production mechanical are good
Amada good actually everything other than chinesium and Edwards under cranks are good