Need some ideas, help adapting a drill press

The biggest question is what are you trying to accomplish?

If you're trying to mill (slotting, facing, etc.) you will be disappointed unless your goal is working with very soft materials, small bits, high speed and light cuts.

If it's precise hole patterns, that big drill is likely to vibrate so much that you won't achieve accuracy better than laying your pattern out and drilling by hand.

Many of us have tried adapting machines to do different jobs than what they were designed for, results are variable but not usually satisfying.

Lets start with the project you are wanting this machine for and work from there, otherwise it's difficult to give informed advice.

John
 
Its mainly for drilling and maybe a bit of milling, the milling only soft material, alloys and plastic, what would cause the vibration on the big drill ?
 
liteace said:
Its mainly for drilling and maybe a bit of milling, the milling only soft material, alloys and plastic, what would cause the vibration on the big drill ?
Click to expand...

How big of holes do you need to make? That large of a hand drill is designed for torque needed for making large holes, it's also probably variable speed so you will either need to modify it or set it up to run at top speed. Either way it's unlikely to be any better with that little stand than just using it by hand. You can try making some holes with it before you get too far into the project and judge for yourself.

If you want to do any milling with a setup that flexible you'll need to be running very small bits at high speed, otherwise any cuts you make won't be true to the axis of your x/y table. If you can find a Dremel tool it would probably work well but hole size would be limited.

John
 
Its a single speed, just on / off, Its no load speed is 550 rpm, I know the little spindle motor run a lot lot faster but Ive not seen one with any real power for drilling, prob max size I will be drilling will be 10mm and that will be into alloy or plastic

Im not going to get to involved and start chopping parts up, I'll try and make the adapter, I'll keep everything as is so if need be I can reassemble and turn it back into a large hand drill, I'll also keep the drill stand as it is so If I do go for spindle motor it'll fit straight in
 
Good luck and let us know how it works out.

JOhn
 
Looking around for something to start turning down and found this, it was still attached to the crankshaft but luckly enough the water had not got into that part yet and a hand wound puller managed to extract it 20211117_161609.jpg20211117_161612.jpg20211117_161618.jpg

straight into the lathe and I started chopping slowly

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Had a bit of vibration as it was grinding down those teeth but got there in the end

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next was the other side, chop of the raised part and bore it out

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It all fits well, Ive marked it out, Im going to put 3 allen bolts in so it clamp the drill into place but I need a pillar drill for this

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The finish is a bit rough but I though best like that as give it more grip.
Ill sort the rest out next week at some point, I'll also put extra fixing on the drill to keep it steady.
 
This is still ongoing, slight change of plan, Im not going to use the monster dill, that is reassembled back to a working drill, I used it last week to drill some cylinder head bolts out. slow but done the job no probs.

Ive a milling machine spindle on the way so will be trying to adapt that
 
Plan B, It arrived, is it called a quill? spindle from emco 3 mill, it has m14x1 thread for collect chuck (on order) at the business end and m10x1 at the drive end, I machined out the adapter I made for the LARGE drill, Ive got a very powerful unstoppable 12 volt motor that under extreme load pulls at peak 80 amps, Im going to build a forward / reverse speed controller, Ive not tested torque at lower speed yet, dont worry about
that motor drive coupling, thats not going to be used, thats just there to check height of motor, please comment and give me your ideas

Thanks

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Just to be clear, not negative. You'll learn a lot about machine design and building. Drills are configured for a reason, so are mills. Mills CAN drill, there are endless examples of conversion attempts being unsatisfactory, even unworkable.
All that power, a spindle from a more stout machine, endless adaptations vs a minimal column, far too much distance from cutter tip to column mount, limited span between bearings, non-fully supported quill, no vibration damping mass, incorrect means to hold an endmill; 3 jaws don't do sideloads........a quick scan didn't reveal any consideration of table and positioning screws.
ACME threads? Replaceable nuts? Backlash correction? Gib adjustments? Are gibs dissimilar material? If not they'll gall.
 
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