Used Blanchard Grinders We Buy

Who Built Blanchard Grinders, and Who Builds Them Now

Blanchard grinders were first built by the Blanchard Machine Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which Bourn & Koch says started there before 1895 under its owner, Winslow Blanchard. A contract for hydraulic valve plates that had to be held tight for flatness and parallelism sent one of his engineers, Henry K. Spencer, a recent M.I.T. graduate, off for six months to develop the world's first vertical rotary surface grinder. The first Blanchard Surface Grinder followed in 1909, and Bourn & Koch puts the original company's output at over 16,000 vertical rotary surface grinders from around 1900 through 1999, all built in Cambridge.

The line now belongs to Bourn & Koch, Inc., a Rockford, Illinois machine tool builder started in 1975. In 2004 it bought the assets of DeVlieg-Bullard, which brought it the OEM rights to Blanchard along with Mattison, Motch and others, and it says that made it owner of all the intellectual property behind Blanchard machines, down to prints for every part Blanchard's engineers designed. It builds and supports them under the Blanchard name today.

Cambridge-Built or Rockford-Built

A used Blanchard comes from one of two shops. One from the original company's long run was built in Cambridge. One built new or remanufactured since the 2004 acquisition came out of Bourn & Koch's Rockford, Illinois plant, where Blanchards now ship standard with a Fanuc CNC and a Blanchard operator interface that walks the operator through the cycle. Bourn & Koch says it has made numerous improvements to the original design, and in 2018 it redesigned and re-engineered the 22AD-42, which it calls by far its most popular model.

That is the same size series that leads the Blanchard listings on this hub. Send us the serial and the build year from the plate and we can tell which shop your machine came from, which matters for parts, the control and what a buyer expects to find inside.

Manual, Early CNC or Fanuc: The Control on a Blanchard

Until Blanchard began adding CNC controls in the 1990s, every Blanchard surface grinder was a manual machine run from dials and handwheels, and those still do the job. Bourn & Koch is blunt that the early Blanchard controls were plagued with issues, and that many shops shy away from grinders still wearing the original CNC. Since its 2004 acquisition it has fitted Fanuc controls instead, starting with the Fanuc Powermate and moving to the Fanuc 35i, with the X table traverse and the Z grinding head travel both under CNC.

For a seller that splits the field three ways: a manual Blanchard, judged on its chuck, ways and spindle; a 1990s Blanchard on its original control, where the control is usually the first question; and a Bourn & Koch machine or remanufacture on a Fanuc, which reads like a current grinder. Tell us which one is on your floor.

Blanchard Sizes on Bourn & Koch's New-Machine Page

Bourn & Koch's new-machine page lists these Blanchard sizes, from the 8AD-12 to the 72HD-120 (its parts page names the 76HD-120 as the largest it builds). For each it gives the largest part it is designed to grind, and for the two biggest, the wheel and chuck:

Figures are from Bourn & Koch's Blanchard pages. Older Cambridge-built sizes that turn up in the used listings are not all on this list, and the suffix letters on them follow the original company's naming.

Remanufactured, Rebuilt or As Found

Bourn & Koch draws a line between a rebuild and a remanufacture. Its remanufacture starts by taking the whole machine apart and inspecting the major castings, then replaces every part that misses the OEM print, reconditions all the way surfaces by machining and hand scraping back to the original alignments, swaps the mechanical gearboxes and acme screws for current technology, and finishes with servo motors, a new Fanuc CNC and an accuracy test. Short of that, its Rockford plant does magnetic chuck rebuilds, spindle rebuilds, control retrofits and gear box repairs.

Each of those changes what a used Blanchard is worth. A machine that went through a full remanufacture, or had its chuck or spindle rebuilt, should say so in the details you send, with the paperwork if you have it. One that has run as found for decades still sells; it gets scoped on the chuck face, the ways and the spindle as they stand.

Bourn & Koch Parts and Field Service, or Selling Outright

For a Blanchard you plan to keep, Bourn & Koch is the OEM source. It stocks the common parts and can make any part on the machine to OEM specifications, keeps the manuals, electrical diagrams and hydraulic schematics, and sends factory-trained field service technicians, based throughout the United States, to repair Blanchards on site. That is the right call for a grinder still earning its keep.

For one you want off the floor, we buy it outright. A recent chuck rebuild, a field service report or a control retrofit is worth mentioning when you send us the details.

What Is in the 274 Blanchard Listings We Hold

Every listing in this hub is a Blanchard, all 274 of them. There is no second make to filter past. Blanchard sits 26th of the 126 brands we track, so this is a mid-sized block rather than a headline one, and it runs wide rather than deep: 133 distinct designations across 274 listings, which averages roughly two listings per designation. Filing is not uniform either. 147 listings are filed as CNC Grinding Machines and 121 as Metal Cutting, with six more sitting one apiece in CNC Miscellaneous Machines, CNC Boring Mills, Other Machines, CNC Motors, CNC Lathes and CNC Vertical Turning Centers. That split matters when you scan the grid, because the Blanchard you want may be filed under Metal Cutting rather than under grinding. It matters when you sell one too. We scope each unit off its own data plate and its own condition, not off the category it landed in.

How to Read a Blanchard Model Number

Blanchard designations come in pairs, and the pairing holds across this hub. An 8 pairs to 12, an 11 to 16 or 20, an 18 to 30, 36 or 42, a 20 to 36, a 22 to 42, a 26 to 48, a 32 to 60, a 36 to 66, a 42 to 72 or 84, a 48 to 96, a 54 to 100, and a 72 to 120. The second number is always the larger and climbs with the first. In practice it tracks the chuck size, so a 22-42 and a 42-84 are not the same conversation. The suffix letters are not decoration either. Across these 274 listings HD appears on 36, plain D on 33, K on 29, AD on 17, A on 9, CK on 7, HACD on 4, CD on 3 and C on 2. Send the letters with the designation: a 22HD-42 and a 22D-42 read differently on our side.

The Sizes We See Most: 22, 18 and 11

Depth here sits in three series. The 22 series is the broadest at 51 listings, spread across variants including 22, 22K, 22D, 22HD, 22AD, 22HACD and 22CK. The 18 series follows at 39, then the 11 series at 38. After that it thins quickly: 20 at 29, 32 at 20, 42 at 12, 26 at 11, 36 at 8, and 48 and 54 at 7 each. The largest single family is a plain 11 at 26, then a plain 18 at 20, then 22 and 22K at 11 apiece. Families of two or more account for 240 of the 274, leaving 34 one-off designations. Category filing varies by family. The 11 family carries the most grinding-filed listings, 17 CNC Grinding Machines against 9 Metal Cutting, and 11D at 4 of 4 and 32HD at 3 of 3 are filed entirely as grinding. The 42 family runs the other way, 6 Metal Cutting to 3 grinding.

Big-Chuck Blanchards and the Rigging Conversation

31 listings sit at size 42 and above, and 39 sit at 36 and above. That is where the seller conversation changes. The named large designations include 36HD-66 at 5 listings, 54-100 at 4, 42HD-84 and 42-72-84 at 3 each, and 72HD-120, 48HD-96, 42-84 and 42-72 at 2 each. The HD suffix appears on 36 listings overall and clusters at the heavy end: 72HD, 76HD, 54HD, 48HD, 42HD and 36HD. A 72HD-120 does not leave a building the way an 11-16 does. It is often pitted in or on its own pad, the floor loading is real, and the disassembly sequence decides the freight. That is the hard part of the move, and we can arrange the rigging, crating, freight and the pickup for it in all 50 states. What helps beforehand is a photo of the machine in its footprint showing how it is anchored.

What Moves the Offer on a Used Blanchard

Jason Puuri handles the valuation, and on a Blanchard he looks at two things first: the chuck face and the ways. The chuck face tells him how often it has been ground flat and how much magnet is left. The column and wheel head ways tell him whether it still holds flat under load. After that comes spindle condition, control type, and whether the unit is CNC or manual. The book is not uniform, which is why nothing gets quoted off a size chart: 147 listings are filed as CNC Grinding Machines and 121 as Metal Cutting, and the same nominal size turns up in both. Have four things ready before you call. The full designation with its suffix letters, so 22HD-42 rather than 22-42. The serial number. The chuck size. And two photos, one of the chuck face, one of the footprint. A quote typically comes back inside 24 to 48 hours.

Selling a Blanchard Outright Instead of Listing It

We buy the machine. We are not a broker and this is not consignment, so we buy the machine ourselves and arrange the pickup. We purchase outright and arrange the pickup. Age is not the filter people expect. Across the 121 listings here that carry a build year, the range runs 1969 to 2022, and the remaining 153 carry no year at all. A missing year on the plate does not disqualify a machine and does not stop a quote. Running, idle or decommissioned all work, and so does a single machine or a full facility. If the Blanchard is one line on a floor you are clearing, the rest of the grinding department can go on the same quote and the same pickup. Alongside Blanchard we regularly buy Okamoto, Studer, Chevalier, Mitsui, Jones and Shipman, and Landis. One offer, one truck.