What is/was this high speed drill press used for ?

We take the postal service for granted, but it's not always reliable in other parts of the world. Both packages I received from South Africa were couriered .
 
Nashtem I have that little drilling machines sister, My machine is in mint condition, The builder of yours & my machine is Alfred Herbert & Co of Coventry England, Sadly now gone It is an instrument makers drilling machine, and as a design goes back quite a long time , I have an illustration of one in a 1940/s Herbert catalogue, A similar style of drilling machine (And in my estimation a better & heavier machine) was built by Fredrick Pollard & Sons of Leicester England, although my little Herbert would be hard to beat, It is a sweet little machine, I have not used it for a long time The last Task I carried out with it was drilling 0.010" dia holes No problem

Some one has altered your machine by changing the original pulleys to Vee pulleys, It should have pulleys for a flat belt drive, The pulleys are heavily crowned to hold the fast running belt on the pulleys The flat pulleys give an exceptionally fine & smooth drive Given some pieces of Duralumin the pulleys are a simple enough shape to reproduce My belt is a very light and fine Miraclo, But now needing replaced Try as I might I cannot get the pulley off the motor , I will have to examine it in further detail Up until the late 1980 period the light instrumentation works around where I live had lots of these little Herberts of that size I am not in my workshop at the moment, I will check I believe it is a Herbert No 0 size
 
Hold that result Nashtem, I have had another detailed look at your photographs of your drill, I think your machine It is not a Herbert but a PollardI can look up my catalogues and send you illustrations of both machines to South Africa if you can find any way of getting me a private message Both machines are very similar in design parameters, The give away is the lubricator on the front of the machine, and the nice heavy serated handle on the top of the cover tend to be a Pollard feature The last Pollard I came across was a double machine Two spindles on the one common bed , I have seen them up to four spindle machines I obtained one for a man and in lifting it on the crane, He looped the sling strop around the little chucks , Bent the spindles and totally wrecked the machine!
 
Hold that result Nashtem, I have had another detailed look at your photographs of your drill, I think your machine It is not a Herbert but a PollardI can look up my catalogues and send you illustrations of both machines to South Africa if you can find any way of getting me a private message Both machines are very similar in design parameters, The give away is the lubricator on the front of the machine, and the nice heavy serated handle on the top of the cover tend to be a Pollard feature The last Pollard I came across was a double machine Two spindles on the one common bed , I have seen them up to four spindle machines I obtained one for a man and in lifting it on the crane, He looped the sling strop around the little chucks , Bent the spindles and totally wrecked the machine!
That's a pure sin , I hate when the so called no nothings , when working with precision machinery even just moving them.
 
Thanks to core-oil for identifying the drill as a Pollard Corona Super High Speed Bench Drill (9FX) This is confirmed by the 9fx numbers on castings of the machine I have.

As suggested it was driven by a flat belt and had interchangeable pulleys to achieve the various speed.
I am probably going to replace the non standard motor and pulleys with a variable speed DC motor and drive.
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Just to add to my earlier post.I'm still thinking your drill is missing an idler pulley. I read the flyer of the previous post of the Carona High Speed Drilling Machine by enlarging it and it says the drill has 6 speeds from 3 pulleys. Also, the brass plate clearly shows a small pulley, medium pulley and a large pulley listed with the belt positions for the 6 speeds. Without three pulleys, I'm not sure how one would get 6 speeds if each pulley only has three diameters each....Unless of course you have a 2 speed motor.
 
By the way... from looking at your last picture, it appears as that the center shaft has a cast iron bushing in which the center pulley would idle on. The center pulley would have an integral bronze bushing which would serve as your pulley bearing. In any case, if you just want 3 speeds, you’re good to go as it is. For 6 speeds, think about the center idler step pulley.
 
By the way... from looking at your last picture, it appears as that the center shaft has a cast iron bushing in which the center pulley would idle on. The center pulley would have an integral bronze bushing which would serve as your pulley bearing. In any case, if you just want 3 speeds, you’re good to go as it is. For 6 speeds, think about the center idler step pulley.
Adding the center pulley would also allow for both higher high end spindle RPM and lower low end spindle RPM, actual speeds would depend on the pulley sizes chosen. If it was my drill press, I would already be working on that...
 
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