Crazy idea or not? End mill holder for WT 15in drill press

george wilson said:
Matt,your collet chuck is in the mail. If you unscrew the nose,you can pull out the 1/4" collet,and the larger collet will take 1/2" end mills. Sorry,I was in a hurry to send it and could not find any 1/4" end mills to send with it,except for solid carbide end mills. They would likely snap off very quickly in your setup. They require very rigid circumstances to not break as they are very brittle.

Let me know when you try it,and tell me if it fits your drill press. If it does not,I would appreciate it if you'd return it.
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George, that's simply awesome, thank you so much! I'll check it out as soon as it gets here and I'd be more than happy to return it if it doesn't fit. The extra collet was a really bonus too! Do you think it would be possible to make a 3/8in collet too? That would really be the icing on the cake :D

I finished tarting up the vise at the weekend and fixed my grinder (melted switch), so the next job is to make up new leadscrew plates with proper bearings. I was going to start tonight, but I really should get going on a manuscript my boss is hassling me about, so it'll have to wait until I gain some traction with that.
 
All you need to do is turn a STEEL-NEVER USE BRASS,it is slippery and the end mill WILL suck out and ruin your work and possibly break the end mill,cylinder 1/2" O.D.,and 3/8" I.D.. Slit it once and use it in the 1/2" collet.

I had some old end mill bushings I could have included had I known you'd want them(IF I could find the box). But,postage is nearly $5.00 a pop. They would still have needed slitting as they were designed to be used with a set screw,and have an opening in their sides for its passage.

The bushing will no doubt close a little bit upon being slit,so make them out of hot rolled steel,not nice,smooth cold rolled. Cold rolled looks nice,but it is full of stresses from being cold rolled. It is much more liable to warp and make trouble than hot rolled. You may still have to force the bushing open a bit,even with hot rolled. Don't force it too much,or it won't go into the 1/2" collet,which you certainly do not want to harm. THE COLLET IS NOT HARDENED. Be careful with it. Sears stuff was cheaply made!! And is perhaps even worse today. At least,it runs true,and I hope the collar threads on. You can count yourself lucky if it does fit. Even .001" too small,and the threads will not screw on.

If you can't tell what you have because it is old and rusty,heat it up red hot with a Mapp gas torch,and let it AIR COOL. Then,it will be like hot rolled. An effective,simple way to concentrate your torch heat is to take 2 or 3 DRY bricks,or white fire bricks if you have them. Put them together to make an interior corner. Put your piece of metal in the corner. The torch will heat a much larger piece of metal red hot that way.

BE SURE your bricks do not let the torch heat run down between them and set fire to a wooden table beneath them. It would be better if you stacked up the bricks 2 bricks deep to form the floor of your corner,and do not use a flammable work surface. You can easily ruin a piece of furniture by scorching it,even if it doesn't catch fire. Your wife might give you a dirty look if you do that!!!:) If your kitchen stove has a PORCELAIN top,you could do it there if you have no other place in this cold weather.

P.S.: If the collar won't work,and IF the wall of the #33 Jacobs taper in the attachment are thick enough,you could at least drill the adapter and thread a set screw into it. Drill a divot in the taper of the drill press for it to fit into.

Lastly,DO get some SMALL DIAMETER end mills with 1/4" shanks to use. Those big ones are too large for the strength of that drill press and that not too sturdy milling slide. You don't want to destroy what you do have to use,or bend the spindle,etc.. Take this advice seriously. Use only HSS. Carbide is too brittle and WILL break if everything is not very rigid. You,being a beginner,might break it anyway. It is part of the learning process. HSS is brittle too,but not as brittle as carbide. Chinese HSS is more brittle than usual.

Is State College near Kutztown? I think I have passed through a college town many times on the way to the extravaganza flea market.
 
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Some more needed advice: Place paper strips in the jaws of the milling vise to get a much better non slip grip on your work. Use brown paper bag paper,or even newspaper. Do NOT use shiny paper. It has clay in it which is slippery.

Since you are trying to hold round objects,they will be risky to hold at best without slipping. Aluminum is a slippery metal. Brass is very slippery. If you have to hold those lights on their round surfaces,I would take a piece of hard wood and drill the correct size hole in it to hold the light(or bore it in the lathe). Then,saw it in half. Grip the round light in the hole you have made. Hardwood will be strong enough for what you are doing. It is not the greatest way to get high precision,but I do not think you need real high precision for what you are doing. They did stuff like that in the old days,and it will still work just fine.

I looked at your set of end mills. The 3 smallest size ones should be o.k.. The shank diameter doesn't matter,just the size of the cutter.

Double end mills with 1/4" shanks will suit deeply enough into that collet. Larger shank double end mills won't.

Do not let any oil get into the holes of the collets. The spiral end mills can suck out of the collet. That attachment I sent you is not the strongest outfit ever made. You should clean out the 1/2" hole. It has a bit of old oil in it. I was in a big hurry and did not clean anything off.
 
fantastic advice George, thank you. For the 3/8>1/2 bushing, I have a couple of pieces of mystery steel rod I can use, one of which looks like a DIY counterbore about 12in long. Would this make sense

- cut off a small piece (2-3in long), normalise with a MAPP torch (probably on my driveway or in the garage away from anything flammable) and then leave overnight to air cool.

- turn down to a bit oversize, then drill/ bore out to 3/8 or a little undersize? Slip fit with the end mill shank or a slight interference fit so that the bushing is forced slightly open when it's cut and an endmill is inserted?

- cut length ways, insert endmill and chuck it cutter end in the lathe, with the chuck holding the non-turned OD of the shaft. Turn down to 1/2 for a slip fit into the collet. Remove any burrs.

Thank you for all the warnings, I really do want to take it easy and avoid either hurting myself or my tools (or is it the other way round :)). The limitations of my tools are pretty huge and hopefully I've already worked out most of my stupidity on my lathe, but I'll still be playing attention, don't worry. I had intended to make a set of aluminium jaws for the X-Y vise, mainly to avoid marring the work. Would that help with workholding? Good idea on using wood, I've done that before to hold a torch in my bench vise and it worked very well.

I'm keeping my eyes open for 1/4in shank end mills, but they're not very common compared with the 3/8 and 1/2 shanks. I have my eye on a few end mill lots on eBay that have some 1/4 shank end mills, so we'll see how that goes. Just in general, would 4 flute end mills be better suited to my marginal set up compared with the 2 flute ones I have? I read somewhere that 4fl = less vibration than 2fl. I've also been reading up a lot on spindle speed, end mill size and depth of cut to get a rough idea where to start, although obviously the literature is geared towards proper mills.
 
If you are only milling aluminum,2 flute end mills are generally used on it. That is because large cuts can be taken in aluminum,and the 2 flute design allows much more room for the larger bunch of chips. However,you will be taking lighter cuts and slower feeds with just the drill press. 4 flute end mills would not get clogged in your setup. The 4 flutes will take longer to get dull,too,having twice as many cutting edges(unless your mills do not run true,in which case just 1 flute might be doing all the cutting.

I do not recommend aluminum jaws. They will be slippery,and just as hard as the aluminum you are cutting. So,they'll likely damage the work just as much. Perhaps worse than smooth jaws of steel. Use the paper to help get a better hold.

You don't HAVE to get 1/4" shank end mills. Just get end mills with small cutting diameters. The shanks don't cut. They don't matter.

No,do not make your 3/8" hole a bit too small. You will have a hard time getting the end mills into the bushings. If the bushings do close up a bit when you saw them,make the inside diameter just a bit LARGER. Keep the 1/2" outside diameter the same,though. I'm talking only a few THOU larger on the I.D.. Make the hole too large and the collet might not fully close down tight on the bushing. Collets do not have much range of sizes they will hold. If the bushing you will be inserting into the collet is too small,just the front edge of the collet will be gripping it,leaving the rear end of the bushing to waggle about and the cutter won't be held correctly,or run true.

Edit: I changed "you" to "thou".Spellcheck made that word wrong for me,making nonsense of a sentence. Thou = .001". Short for thousandth ,which is trouble to type out every time.
 
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I hope the big snow storm doesn't slow down your mail!! It has already started snowing here,and we are just on the eastern fringe. Hope the ice does not get us. I hate ice storms more than anything else,since trees fall on the owed lines.
 
on the contrary, it was sitting next to my plate on the dinner table when I got home last night. Even better, IT FITS! It's like it was made for it - snug fit on the taper, then the collar pulled it up onto the threads until all the threads were covered. I'm am so chuffed, I really owe you one (at least a beer or two!) :D

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and close up

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The 1/4in twist drill in there is just for reference. I'm really excited about this and you've saved me a bunch of time and money. The generosity of strangers is humbling indeed.


Oh, also got a few minutes last night to start making the new leadscrew plates from some scrap 1/2in aluminium plate I scrounged from a scrap bin

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you can just see one of the bearings in the background

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Faced flat one of the cuts, if I get time tonight I'll face flat the others and then start drilling and boring. Also have to make the brass thrust washers from some plate I scrounged. Very very excited :)
 
GREAT!!!!!

Well,at least you do not have to worry about the chuck coming off. I am very happy that it actually did fit your machine. It will make your milling safer,at least. If not easier on your spindle bearings. They will last longer if you just use small cutters. I could wish that the whole thing was not so long and drawn out. I guess it needed to be to clear the #33 taper,and accept a decent length router bit shank. I'm not convinced that thing could not get bent if too large a bit was used,and grabbed on something. So,be careful with it. I don't see many of those floating around. Never saw one on Ebay,or in a flea market.

There was no need for it to continue to lay around unused in my shop. I haven't used it since the 60's,I think. The sawdust (which I was in too big a hurry to clean out) is vintage sawdust.

I'm wondering if your drill press was threaded the same as mine and some others to make for the possibility of using a chuck with a captured threaded collar. Must be some reason why it fit this device.
 
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