vrocco wrote:What is the difference between the 1200CMB and the Blitz?
I know the Blitz is a newer machine and that HPC sells an upgrade kit for the 1200CMB. What exactly does it upgrade?
I asked the same question when I bought mine. At their heart they are still the same machine but one just has a few small refinements. I don't remember all the differences but I do recall that the newer machines come with the safety switch that cuts the power if the shoulder gauge is left up. The dials also now have a slightly coarser thread pitch which makes dialing faster and the threads less prone to damage if you bottom out the dial on one end or the other.
As for the thread damage, I wasn't too worried about that at the time I bought it because I'm careful with my stuff. I was glad for it a couple of months later though because one day when I wasn't around some dufus went and cranked my spacing dial all the way to the right pretty hard and left it there. When I found it like that I had to turn the dial pretty hard to unstick the dial, but luckily everything was still in alignment and no damage appeared to have been done. It makes me wonder if that sort of scenario was what they had in mind when they made that particular change in the design, and if the original design would have been damaged in this case.