Atomic Rockets Part 2

While I was looking through the Lawrence Livermore photo archive, this picture caught my eye. At first glance I dismissed it as just a big milling machine, but something kept drawing me back. I'm not sure, but I think it was that had never seen a machine of this configuration before. Besides, I'm a gear head. I just couldn't resist.

Blowing up the photo, I was able to make out the  model:

Feeding that to Google got me a a brief history, some specifications (it weighs ten tons) and some more photos. It also got me several ads for used ones. One as close as Pennsylvania, another as far as India.

The machine is accurate to a ten-thousandth of an inch, which is ten times more accurate than your run of the mill machine tools.

Update April 2015: replaced the photos that Blogger lost. The smaller one is no longer a detail from the larger one, I found it out on the net.