Unimat 3 milling post

I've had this for a while now, but so far I've not needed to use it. However, that might change very shortly, so its time that I had a quick play with it and wrote a description for this blog.
Here it is;

It attaches to the lathe bed using two caphead screws;

The motor needs to be removed from the headstock by undoing two bolts. Then the motor needs to be rotated on its mounting plate, by undoing two more screws, best accessed by removing the motor pulley and small drive belt;

Rotated;

And fitted to the milling head;

Fitted up;

Note the return spring, for when the machine is used for drilling.
The head can be rotated, note the divisions on the side of the head;

Rotated;

A milling table can be bolted to the cross-slide;

Or a milling vice;

An adapter can be bolted to the milling table;

Which allows it to be attached to the milling column;

So the machine can be used as a drill press.

On the top of the column (as used above) there's an M14x1 T bolt screwed in;

Which looks like this;

With the column reversed it can be clamped to the milling table to make a drill press;

Although its a bit unstable and needs bolting down to be used safely.
This feature can also be used to clamp the milling column to the lathe's saddle;

With a dividing head clamped onto the lathe bed, or a chuck and dividing plate on the headstock the machine can be used for gearcutting.
The T bolt can be used on its own to attach a chuck to the saddle, for holding round items for milling as well.

If you look carefully at the photos at the top of the page you'll note that the drive pulley has a single groove and is made from aluminium. This is a replacement, the original pulley should be plastic and have two grooves like the headstock pulley. I guess the last owner used the machine with a different variable speed motor. I originally thought that the headstock pulley would fit the milling head, however the headstock spindle uses an M14x1 thread and the milling head spindle M12x1. Ho hum...

Judging by the design of the milling attachment, and by the fact that the column has a larger diameter (28mm on the 3, 25mm on the SL), the Unimat 3 in milling mode should be more rigid than the SL which I usually use for milling.

Paul.

Update March '20 - the correct spindle pulley has now been acquired and fitted.