Yes. Suppose you are drilling a hole. You lay out your part, centerpunch
your hole, carefully clamp the part, locate the centerpunch right under
the spindle, clamp the X and Y axes, put in a center drill (maybe 2 1/2" long)
and start the hole. Then you open it out to maybe 1/4". Then you get out
your 1/2" drill bit and dang it you can't get it into the chuck - the head's
too low. So you loosen the head and raise it up a little. Uh oh, now your
spindle isn't above the hole anymore. So now you have to fuss around lining
up the hole again.

It is this keeping-spindle-while-raising-head feature that is why you pay
the extra bucks for a dovetailed column. It isn't just while drilling holes.
You could start milling something with a longish end mill and then switch
to a real squat fly cutter. Mill tooling varies a lot in effective length.

The best way is to have a knee mill - that's why the small Clausing knee
mills are so sought after. They have the rare combination of small footprint,
light weight, and knee.

Grant

Peter Grey wrote:

Given that I'll be scribing and machining to a line, is there an advantage
to going with a dovetail unit as opposed to a mill with a round column?