Does anybody have a manual for a Nu-Tool N7B (or possibly rebadged equivalent) drill press?

[SouthernChap]

I've tried googling and the usual places (including lathes.co.uk, vintagemachinery etc.) and nada.

Nu-tool were a Doncaster based (Yorkshire, UK). The N7B was a 16 speed bench drill and mine was made in 1989.

Here are some pictures:






The previous owner welded on an extension so it's not quite as original.

Hopefully someone will have a manual. I don't think it needs any work apart from re-securing the rack at the bottom but it would be nice to have a parts diagram at least.

 

[benmychree]

It looks Chinese to my eye.

 

[SouthernChap]

It looks Chinese to my eye.

Could be, or Taiwanese. That's why I said "(or possibly rebadged equivalent)".

Any ideas about locating a manual?

 

[mmcmdl]

Looks familiar but I don't have a manual either .

 

[mmcmdl]

Born in Taiwan 1986 model . Most likely mass produced and sold off to 1000 different companies worldwide .

 

[Jake M]

It looks to me like the standard Taiwan pattern. Not to say that pattern can't be had from China, as it certainly can, but given the date, I'd probably lean towards it being the standard "Your Name Here" Taiwan offering.

Because these were sold through resellers as cost effective alternatives to "real" machine tools, by resellers who (typically) didn't give a crap about long term maintenance, because their customers were homeowners, "prosumers", and contractors/professionals who needed something that they could use for an extra operation now and then... Good information is hard to find.

The good news though is that these are dirt simple, most anything that fails is going to be an standard numbered bearing, or stuff you could get from a local hardware store. The places that build them don't have "old" parts, so you're never going to order out for original replacement parts.

In my neck of the woods, "Reliant" sold those by the train car load in the "woodworker friendly" variety, with a table that appears to match yours, but with the five speed belt setup. But they came in literally hundreds of permutations of optional features. They were HUGE in those imports of many types of machines. Nation wide too, where as most of them were "kind of" loccal to a state or area. Perhaps that name could help you tig up something?

 

[SouthernChap]

Thanks chaps. I've done some further googling but as @Jake M says, information is scarce to nonexistent.

I wasn't thinking of the diagram so much for buying parts but as an aide memoir to help me (if I do need to disassemble) in the reassembly.

I'll just have to remember to take pictures.

 

[Jake M]

If it's working good, I wouldn't worry about taking it apart. You might never have to. Yesterdays 40 and 30 year old offshore crap, outside of a production environment, and assuming it's still in decent shape today, will most typically still be working fine when todays brand new offshore crap gets mailed back east for scrap metal. And while those older "taiwan style" drill presses (regardless of actual origin) were kinda scoffed on then, they actually do pretty well. You don't want to be putting any micrometers on it, because you don't wanna know, but if you call it good and just use it, it'll do pretty well, and probably for a very long time.

Well, maybe notch out a seat for the rack gear to sit in, then just use it. Or remove the rack for safe keeping until you get a round to it, so it doesn't get bent or damaged in the process. It's not hard to do when they're not tucked in just right.