New (to me) drill press

[jacob]

Check out this sexy beast!



This is actually the fifth hole drilling instrument in my house The others being a micro drill press I bought 20+ years ago to make PCBs. A magnum hole shooter which seemed like a good idea at the time---I actually forget the reason . A battery powered Makita that ffj gave to me. And a brace+auger.

I bought this one because I need "more perpendicular and more bigger" for my next project. However, with this I can get rid of the hole shooter and the proxxon micro press. Anyone interested?

My tool/work style preference is for function over form and when I saw this one I couldn't resist. There's no plastic on this; the functionality of every single part(*) is understandable to me. It comes apart in obvious ways---no cleverly hidden screws, etc.---and I think a machinist should be capable of replacing each and every part.

(*) So the top hole in the front protrusion on the head, below the pulley, ... what's that for? There's a bolt going through the one below it.



I had some issues with leveling the table. Ostensibly the table is held level by the friction between the circular plates on the left when you turn the knob with your hand(**), except there's not enough friction. What I did was to buy a 1/16" rubber sheet ($4) and cut out a gasket with some scissors. This does have some give (potentially causing some runout?!), but at least the table won't be at 88 degrees because I accidentally knocked it. Still, this is obviously not the right way to do it.

(**) It does have a hole where a rod can be inserted for leverage, but given how the handle is knurled, I don't think that's the point! Also the hole doesn't go all the way through.



Anyway, I leveled the table using the handle from a paint can and a bit of applied geometry. The bent wire describes a circle which describes a plane. It's then easy to spin the chuck by hand after lowering it and locking it until it barely touches the table all the way around.



I have no idea what brand it is. (I think the label sat under the pulley on the head) Does anyone know? I can tell that the forward/off/reverse switch was made by the Furnas Electric Co in Batavia, IL and the motor (can't tell the brand) was made in Kalamazoo, MI. I suspect, the entire thing was made around here. The table is a handyman special of welded pipes. I estimate the DP itself weighs about 100lbs and the table weighs about 80lbs.

Also, I believe the original color was orange, then green, then red. Owner must have liked traffic lights.

[Ego]

So, the important questions.... where did you find it, what did you pay and how did you move it?

[daylen]

How much do you want for the micro press? I'll buy.

[jacob]

@Ego - Craigslist after trawling specs for a few weeks. Unlike NorCal, craigslist/craigslisters around here tend to be pretty flaky, but I lucked out. I find there's more "luck" to be found in the ex-burbs. There seems to be a pattern.

Transport was the scariest part. Based on the listing picture I figured that I could probably lift it off and get it into our car (Honda Fit, same as you guys?!) but I turned out not to be that mighty. I could lift it up and down but no farmer's walk However, it was possible to get it onto a hand truck and then have DW help me get it into the car. The problem wasn't the weight as much as it being really awkward.

It then sat in the car for a week while I was having nightmares about [moving] it every night. Then pulled the car from the garage out to the front and got it unloaded to the curb no problem. We could carry the table but no way we would get the press into the house (maybe 30ft + 5 steps of stairs) w/o personal or marital injuries. So the press sat on the curb for a while I scratched my head and a bemused drywall crew next door was looking on. (I should probably just have paid them $5 to haul it inside, but I was thinking liability insurance(*) rather than convenience.)

(*) "What could possibly go wrong?" seems to be a strong guiding principle here. Optimism may be faster, but pessimism is sustainable.

Instead I managed to get the motor off using some metric hex wrenches to half-way substitute for the odd imperial sizes needed (7/16, really?!) I didn't have yet. (Maybe I should add the $8 cost for a complete Harbor freight hex wrench set on top. Praise be, Harbor Freight!) So using a hammer and a piece of scrap wood as a chisel to knock the motor of the rails, we manage to get it inside the house in two parts w/o injury. At this point DW was resigned to it being part of the dining room decoration for the next 6-12 months.

However, I managed to take it further apart and transport each piece (motor, head, table, column, foot) now weighing only 20-30lbs each into the basement.

This left the table in the living room. However, one brave Tuesday, we decide that we can probably do this, that is, hand-carry it into the basement. This is after me researching various appliance trucks, shoulder dollies, and what "stair climbers" do. DW is approximately two Wheaton levels more confident than I am with these things though. So we make a plan. She'll be the mighty dwarf and I'll be Legolas relying on some kind of adroit level of agility as 40% of the contingency "plan": I take the bottom half figuring that if we bail out, she can let go, and I can step to the side ... and worst case, we hit/destroy the watermeter at the bottom of the stairs ... But everything works pretty smoothly adopting a German military cadence---eins, zwei, eins, zwei---half-way down increasing the precision further. So imagine a dwarf and an elf speaking German while holding a badly painted table in between them in the middle of a stairway while having an ER trip ahead of them in 40% of their futures. That's pretty much what it looked like.

After that it was just a question of putting it back together.

I paid $45 (so far). Guy was basically selling at scrap metal prices. Not sure if I bought a collectible, but so far it has worked better than my other four hole-makers. Add $4 for the rubber sheet and $10 for a new chuck key (ordered on amazon). The seller was clearing out an estate and in between listing it and me showing up, he lost the original key, so we went through his collection of remaining chuck keys and found one that half-way worked. Fortunately, it's a Jacobs chuck, so still available. Also, it's a 1/3HP 1725rpm capacitor run motor on the back and if it wasn't painted ugly, that would cost $40 on its own.

[Sclass]

That’s a beauty.

Your indicating method has some merit. It’ll get you in the neighborhood.

Try putting square on the table and using your same wire to indicate on the vertical edge of the square as you move your spindle up and down. You can use a piece of glossy magazine paper as a feeler gauge to check the clearance at different heights.

[Ego]

Hah! Great story. Amazing you left it on the street for a while with no problems. Scrap metal scroungers would have had it in a heartbeat here. So the drill press will be listed as a fixture when you sell the house? I imagine you are going to have a lot of fun with it.

[Toska2]

Many old machines had an oil hole to lube cast iron bushing-bearings. My 1940's metal lathe had some in the head & tail stock.

The only company I can think of that was orange at the time was Allis Chalmers, a megacorp back in the day.

[Toska2]

Walker-Turner was bought by Rockwell

Does this look similar?
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/a ... ss-181563/

[Campitor]

Nice drill press. How do you adjust the drill press height in relation to the table? In my drill press, the table height is adjustable but your drill it appears the table is stationary. But I don't see an elevating rack on the column for cranking the drill housing up or down.

[Gilberto de Piento]

There is a reason why modern drill presses have the belt covered. Be careful. Tuck your beard into your shirt or whatever.

That is a cool rig though. I love old gear with patina.

[Cheepnis]

Nice drill press! No idea what it could be.

My dad went through a drill press collecting phase a few years ago and he would have loved this one, it has character.

Toska2: Case, Minneapolis-Moline, Cletrac were some other brands of orange equipment. I don't think any of those companies ever ventured into shop tools, though.

[jacob]

@Sclass - Not sure I understand what I get out of the extra (try square) step unless the table is uneven? Is it just the ability to better use the feeler gauge instead of going by "sound".

@Toska2 - That's definitely not the one. Table, foot, handles, switch-can(box?) are all different.

@Campitor - You loosen the handle on the right side of the head and then manually lift the drill head+motor up and down the column just like Arnold would have done it. No girly man elevation crank here. There's a collar on the column that catches it if you drop it ... as long as you remember to spin the quill up again.

[Sclass]

@Sclass - Not sure I understand what I get out of the extra (try square) step unless the table is uneven? Is it just the ability to better use the feeler gauge instead of going by "sound".

I think what you did is fine. The wire can deform as you run it on the table. Using a paper as a feeler gauge will give you and idea or the pressure on the contact surface. The square technique is used to check the quill at different heights.

[jacob]

Suppose I bolted a cross slide vise onto the table and used the drill press as an improvised mill to make keyways (in metal shafts) and other simple jobs.

Would that be a phenomenally bad idea? I'm mainly concerned about lateral force on the drill press bearings.

[Campitor]

@jacob

Drill presses typically cannot handle the lateral stress of milling as they are not designed to handle that specific load. The bearings and its supporting assemblies will just deflect and prematurely wear out. A true milling machine has the required rigidity and support for lateral pressure. Plus a drill press chuck is pressed onto a tapered spindle - this tapered design guarantees that the chuck will remain tight on the spindle since the pressure of drilling continually presses the chuck upward into the spindle- this design fails when exposed to excessive lateral force - the chuck will fall off the spindle eventually.

[mooretrees]

Oh that description of you two moving it was TOO funny!!! Thanks for the laughs!

[Sclass]

Plus a drill press chuck is pressed onto a tapered spindle - this tapered design guarantees that the chuck will remain tight on the spindle since the pressure of drilling continually presses the chuck upward into the spindle- this design fails when exposed to excessive lateral force - the chuck will fall off the spindle eventually.

Argh, I learned this the hard way in grad school. There was a drill press that was used as a mill and the taper broke loose. The taper spun and got scored and it never really stayed on after that. It would always come loose if the bit chattered on the work piece because of the damage to the mating surface. I contributed to the scoring as I’d just try to maintain pressure on the spindle as it slipped (the choice was to back off and send the big and chuck flying). Permanently burned into my mind.

There is a YouTube video about converting a junky drill press into a junky mill. The guy actually modifies the spindle to overcome this issue. It is a lot of work and the mill sucked.