Poor man's mill

[dwall174]

Also agree that a drill press isn't ideal to use as a mill, but sometimes you just need to use what you have.

I have an old 17" Delta drill press with a custom-made arbor that has a 5/8"-16 threaded mount so the chuck will not fall off.

I used it to do a project that would have normally required a mill with a rotary table.

Needed to repair a broken section of the flange on a cast-iron band saw wheel!
Basically, I set-up the band saw wheel centered on a piece of plywood attached to the base of the drill press & used the wheel as the rotary table.
I first used an angle grinder to get most of the material removed, so there was less than 1/8" to clean-up with the end mill.
Being it was cast-iron it was easy to machine so I used a fine pitched 4-flute roughing end mill & slowly rotated the wheel into the end mill.

I used self-tapping screws to hold the repair piece in-place & then I drilled & counter sunk some flat head screws from the other side of the wheel that were tapped into the repair piece. I used JB-Weld while assembling it & after that set I ground off the heads of the self-tapping screws & used some more JB-Weld finish up any gaps.

Finished wheel.


Doug

 

[Grinderman]

Nice job on the pulley. I use my drill/mill all the time. Just yesterday I made another Indicator holder for my lathe. I used one of those old wood planer bits to make the large radius for the indicator body. They also work great for general aluminum surfacing too if you don’t have the real deal.