I don't know about the knock-offs, but the official Unimat ones are supposed to handle brass and aluminium, especially the full metal ones that use aluminium extrusions.

I think they are mostly used by boat and small-gauge railway modellers who are probably shy of claiming to be model engineers.

My dad used to use a drill chuck on the end of a hoover motor, with a tailstock from a Black and Decker adaptor all screwed to a board, before getting a Unimat lathe for his boat bits.

It would be interesting to see some examples of work done on one of these modular setups.

Neil

Given a suitable cutter, they would cut anything, I suppose! Diamond drillor cutter would even cut glass.

BUT, remember a dremel is about 130W and this is just 30W. So less power than the average sewing machine? Dremels will turn at several thousand rpm

Mickey Mouse if he was made of soft soap might be about its limit without overstraining it, I might guess. Here is the maximum handling specs taken directly from the ad:

Max. thickness of cut: hardwood: 4mm, plywood: 7mm, softwood: 18mm, sheet metal: 0.5mm, plexi-glass

I would think the 'maximum' might mean that quite precisely. Does that not answer your original post?