Slowing Down My Drill Press !!!

Have you considered a planetary gear reducer? Second thought....Probably cheaper to go buy a used band saw.
 
I've got a metal cutting bandsaw already. I picked this thing up a while back as a second cutting machine. I'm even considering removing the motor and returning it to leather belt drive, and run it off a hit/miss engine.
 
Be patient and keep an eye out for a reduction box or make one from some old gears or pulleys.
 
Surplus center has new reducers from $70 to $98 rated 5:1 up to 20:1 and various hp ratings from 3/4 to 2 hp in addition to much larger ones rated to 5 hp for about $140
 
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I found a 90 degree speed reducer in an old washing machine, one with a vertical spindle.
-brino
 
I haven't read every post here, so please excuse if this is redundant. Instead of changing the pulley (or gear) system, has anyone tried replacing the motor with one from an old treadmill? Cost $50-$100, you can have continuous speed control from a crawl on up without changing belts or gears. Plus, it's reversible - I use it for tapping too. Most treadmill motors are over 1 HP, and run to maybe 2000-3000 rpm max. You can get really high torque at very low speeds with the right kind of PWM power supply, but I just took a Harbor Freight router speed control ($20) and a full-wave rectifier rated around 25 amps to change the AC to DC - which is what they run on and why they are reversible ($10), and a double-pole-double-throw (DPDT) switch to reverse the current flow to change direction, from the local hardware store($10). It does just about everything I need for a drill press.
 
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Hi. I done the same thing earlier in the year, this Meddings Drill had a top speed of 4000 RPM
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Hi.I've picked up another old bench drill recently, and treadmill off ebay for peanuts, and in process of fitting it to the drill.
The treadmill motor has an RPM of 48000, a bit of reduction to be sorted out ;)
 
Mad Monty said:
I haven't read every post here, so please excuse if this is redundant. Instead of changing the pulley (or gear) system, has anyone tried replacing the motor with one from an old treadmill? Cost $50-$100, you can have continuous speed control from a crawl on up without changing belts or gears. Plus, it's reversible - I use it for tapping too. Most treadmill motors are over 1 HP, and run to maybe 2000-3000 rpm max. You can get really high torque at very low speeds with the right kind of PWM power supply, but I just took a Harbor Freight router speed control ($20) and a full-wave rectifier rated around 25 amps to change the AC to DC - which is what they run on and why they are reversible ($10), and a double-pole-double-throw (DPDT) switch to reverse the current flow to change direction, from the local hardware store($10). It does just about everything I need for a drill press.
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Why not just use the controller from the treadmill that the motor came from and add a DPDT switch for reversing?
 
yes I did this with my delta floor model drill press. some things to watch for is to keep pulley size ratios the same or as close as possible otherwise you will need more than 2 belts. second if I were to do this again I would not use v belts I would use the multi rib belts like on new cars. you can get a much better ratio due to the shallow depth of groove on the poly v belts. this does matter so you can get the smallest pulley to the largest pulley size to slow down the speed the most I was able to gat mine down to 110 rpm slowest speed. but the fastest speed cannot be started by the 1 hp motor on my drillpress. bill
 
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