Improving cheap drill press, maybe?

Brino

Yes, I have a table lock and rack and pinion height adjustment.
When I was measuring I first did it with table unlocked, then tightened the table lock and the table came up almost .025. Even locked the front of the table was the low spot. I was able to shim using the "angle adjust wheel to raise the front oh the table to within a thou or two.

Thanks

John


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Hi Dave, great to hear from you. Hope to see you soon too! Looking forward to hearing details about breakfast.

Yes I do have a bottle jack or two, and blocks would be very affordable and the weight might help too.

I will have to check if my jacks have a ram that has an adjustment screw top, if they do then I think I will try and see if it helps a bit.

Without a screw adjustable ram though, I wonder if the upward force would be too great and cause an error by over adjusting.



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You could use a stack of whatever's at hand, holding up a machinist jack under the front end of the table. Machinist jacks are pretty cheap. For even cheaper, a large bolt, nut and steel plate with a hole in it. Your top block will need a hole in it large enough and deep enough to accommodate the bolt. Face the top of the bolt for a smoother surface, thread the nut and drop it into the plate, which in turn sits on top of your top block Adjust as needed. If it's a bit too wobbly you could weld or glue the nut to the plate. Farm "engineering" at work :).

I made some barn jacks using a similar approach. I faced some 3/4" bolts then welded them to 3" square steel plates, using 90 degree magnetic angle brackets to make sure the bolts were square to the plates. Threaded a nut onto that, dropped a washer in, then another 3x3" steel plate with a hole large enough for the bolt to pass through. This went into a hole drilled into the end of a 4x4 long enough to lift what I needed to jack up. To lift I used two wrenches -- one on the head of the bolt and the other on the nut to keep it from spinning as I raised the jack. The welds were ugly as sin but were good enough to do the job.
 
Do you ever use your drillpress table at an angle? Have you thought of making your own non-tilting table with a much longer contact area with the drill press column and some extra braces? I am thinking a foot long piece of pipe that has been slit to go around the column then some ears welded on for clamping the pipe around the column? Then build your table off this piece of slit pipe with some 45 braces to the front corners of the table to eliminate flex.

Have you considered packing the column with cement for a bit of extra rigidity and extra weight?

Just a couple thoughts. :)
 
Thanks Homebrewed and Mike.
Good thoughts all around.

Mike the split pipe concept was what I had as a thought just to add braces but making a new table, that is something to think

And no I don't use the angle adjustment and I've had this since the mid 80s. Unlikely to use it in the future.

The cement filled column, didn't even consider that, but very interesting idea.

Doing many of these things would be a fun challenge and may be projects in the future.

But for now, simple and cheap and relatively fast are the fixes I'm looking for. My nuub skills are growing and so are the lists of projects to consider.

My conundrum. Accurate hole placement is most likely part of all of those future projects, so going up to the top of the thread, is it time to look for a better drill press all together? Start saving or start some of the suggestions above?

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. alchemy may be a discredited practice, how about plain old magic?




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Since you already have two drill presses, and I would consider 0.002" on a drill press pretty good. For really accurate holes you already have a mill, why not just use that for the accurate stuff.

David
 
Sorry, for slow response, to last posts, site is back up again.

I do use the mill for most accurate drilling but it does not have a quill so I have to raise and lower the knee. It's amazing how much cranking on the knee one has to do to get a few holes drilled. Almost like a good gym workout.

Just have the one drill press and the changes made as above have helped a great deal already. The cheap vice was my biggest problem I think.

I do center punch and center drill or spot drill almost all the time for metalwork. What was happening was a hole drilled in a small part, say .5 inches thick, would look good on the top but flip it over and you could see the hole placement was off. Not drilling perpendicular to the work.

The cheap vice was way off. I never thought to check it. The bottom of the vice was not parallel to the drill press table and even the two sides of the vice "floor" were not on the same plane.

So I would put a short part in the vice to one side so the hole I was about to drill would not drill into the vice itself and the floor of the vice was creating an angle. Milling the bottom and vice floor to the same plane helped a great deal. Lesson learned.

And you are right, for most of my work, a .002 flex downward is more than accurate enough, but if one of these suggestions is inexpensive and fairly quick to set up I'll give it a try for those more precise holes.

Thanks for the thoughts. I learn so much from this forum.

John in Minnesota


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