Emco Unimat 3, milling, turning, drilling

Tokarenje, glodanje i bušenje čelika, mesinga i aluminija malim tokarskim strojem.

[@walterbelibastederii6391]

Good morning dear Machinist. My tip to you: always use only HSS-Co. with at least 8% cobalt content for such small Lathes for non-ferrous metals, free-cutting steels (with lead additives).... high-speed steels and no carbide inserts. Carbide is good for stainless steels. The next problem with the Emco-Unimat 3 is the slide Guide. These are made of plastic plates. Replace these with 2 small precision ball bearings. This is easy to do. These two small ball bearings are mounted on a narrow piece of aluminum flat material under the carriage. This results in very good guidance and a good, play-free hold on the bed slide. This means that you can also carry out somewhat coarser processing, remove more chips... and then you are also a lot faster when turning material. The next problem is the original Spiral Lathe Chuck (with the two dowel Pins) Replace this small (60mm) original Emco spiral lathe chuck with a Lathe Chuck with a gear Chuck (with a gear rim Wrench) such as that of a Proxxon PD 210 etc. This means that the parts can also be firmly clamped. The Lathe Chucks that can be clamped with two pins are far too laborious and cumbersome, since two hands are always required to clamp workpieces. I recommend this one = Soba 70mm 3 Jaw Scroll Lathe Chuck 14 x 1mm Thread 145015. But please remember not to drive the small Unimat 3 with such a slightly larger (70 mm) Lathe Chuck at over 2000 rpm. Not that this 70 mm lathe chuck only for max. 2000 rpm. is designed (this 70mm lathe chuck / three-jaw chuck can certainly also be driven up to max. 4000 rpm) but the Centrifugal Forces, mass etc. are on the relatively small Emco - Unimat 3 Main Spindle (with: M 14 x 1.00mm) or on the aluminum main Spindle Block simply too big. P.s. But if you only mount a good collet chuck (ER / ESX 16 or ER / ESX 25) on the EMCO Unimat 3, then this small lathe is very good and also reasonably precise. Collets are the best choice for accurate work. It is most precise to use a collet holder for 8mm ""draw collets"" (so-called: 8mm watchmaker collets) that are inserted "directly" into the main spindle and clamped with a draw tube (with 8mm internal thread). Such a watchmaker collet chuck was available at that time as a special accessory from EMCO. This is also available from GG-Tools (in Germany) as a replica including the 8mm watchmaker collets. But you can also build such a collet chuck and the draw tube yourself and then only have to buy the 8mm draw-back collets. ""Draw-in collets"" (which are clamped from behind) are always the better / best choice than deadlength collets (which are pressed from the front), because these are taken directly into the main spindle of the lathe and are also clamped back in the same way, so there is no big, cantilevered collet chuck mounted at the end of the main spindle. All watchmakers and precision lathes (such as Schaublin Type 65 / Type 70 / Type 102 etc. are always designed with Type W draw-back collets (and not with ER / ESX deadlength collets). p.s. If you take this into account, then you have a small and fine lathe with which you can also work precisely and it is a pleasure to work small parts with it. For larger parts you always go to a larger table lathe etc. Mount the EMCO Unimal 3 on a stable and precise thick aluminum plate with a plate thickness of at least 20mm. Of course, this plate must be absolutely flat in order not to provoke any tension or distortion of the machine bed on the Unimat 3 !! And finally a very valuable tip: Always let the slightly larger workpieces run much more slowly. The vast majority of people make the biggest mistake (when working on metal) that they always drive at far too high speeds. High speeds always result in vibrations, oscillations, etc. Especially with small machine tools. Large, stable, professional machine tools can be used at high speeds, but not small, weakly designed hobby machines. Many greetings from Switzerland Freiher von & zu Schenkenberg

[@melgross]

I bought this when it first came out. It’s beautifully made. I still have it! But the problem is that there’s not enough power to do much. If you’re going to just skim a tiny amount of metal, then it’s fine, but it can’t do much useful work without taking hours. Threading requires the even more expensive master thread device, and you need a different master thread for each thread, and it’s short, so you can’t thread anything long. I mostly used it as a precision mini drill press as a result of that.

[@sharky3.055]

what chuck you have