Drill Press Cross Slide

[Gold]

As per Gene Pink's request here is the drill press I've been working on. First a little background. I bought this radial arm drill press about ten years ago. It was when I first realized I would need to be able to do some metalwork to be able to build gear. I had the  hair brained idea that I was going to make this drill press into a poor man's milling machine. I had a machinist make me a plate to go on the cross slide and a couple of other pieces. That was a dismal failure.  There is a lot of slop in both the cross slide and the drill press. Neither are precision machines.

I ended up breaking down the drill press a few years later because I wasn't using it and there wasn't room in the shop with the console frame taking up most of the space. I found that the amount of clamping and unclamping required took too much time. I ended up using a hand drill for most everything. 

When I broke down the drill press the post was stuck in the head. I had to  cut the post because I couldn't get it out of the head. It took a bunch of different tries to remove the bit of post stuck in the head. I ended up cutting it out with a reciprocating saw.

Using a hand drill is fine on 1/8" stock. Any thicker than that I find it hard to drill a straight hole. I was using thicker material on a regular basis so I though it was time to give the drill press another shot.

I cut down the floor stand post and removed the adjustable height table and rack and pinion. I mounted the cross slide on the drill press base.

The slots in the horizontal cross pieces lets me push against the workpiece and tighten. The middle vertical pieces provide support. All the pieces that look like one another were made the same way and are interchangeable.

I made the hold down pieces below. The workpiece is locked in both horizontally and vertically.

Since the cross slide can only cover 9" of travel the workpiece need to slide to have access to the whole workpiece. Its easy and quick to loosen, slide and retighten. I want to make a couple more of those hold down pieces so I don't have to shuffle the two of them around.

 

[Gene Pink]

As per Gene Pink's request here is the drill press I've been working on.

Thanks Paul, I appreciate you taking the time to post this, it is always great to learn other peoples solutions to problems. Comes in handy for not having to reinvent the wheel.

That is some hefty frame, 2" X 1/2" barstock? Is that the same X-Y table that had too much slop, or did you find a tighter one?

Thanks again,
Gene

 

[Gold]

I had a 6 ft length plus some more of that 2” x 0.375” bar stock. I didn’t want any flex over the long dimension. I had some smaller bar stock but I decided to make everything out of the same stuff.

The cross slide is a cheap one. My basic revelation to set it up was that I would do layouts by hand and use the cross slide only to line up the bit with the mark. There are so many things that are sloppy in the setup trying to get precision is a fools errand. I have everything squared up as best I can but it will never be a mill.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Back in the 60's when I was a young puke working in a machine shop, we had a huge a__ drill press that was more like a milling machine than what we think of as drill presses. Sorry I have no idea of who made it. That machine shop had a lot of old WWII surplus gear.  We had lathes with crazy long beds probably for machining warship gun barrels (?).

That big dog drill press had a heavy table with slotted key ways so the work could be firmly secured to the table... The drill head even had an automatic feed.

I only recall doing one project on that drill press but it was a doozy... I had to drill something like a 4" diameter holes in some sheet metal. I ended up stacking several sheets of sheet metal together clamped down firmly to the table... Even I knew you didn't want sheet metal grabbing and spinning around loose...

Then I used a fly cutter adjusted for the several inch diameter cut...  It was a little scary to watch as too fast of a feed could cause the fly cutter to dig in with bad results.  I also liberally lubricated the cutter (IIRC that drill press may have had one of those automatic lubrication systems). I do not remember any tools being launched across the room that day so it worked as planned.

I suspect one of the old gray beards working in the shop supervised me about how to do it correctly...(more to protect the machine than me.)

JR

 

[kambo]

i shimmed my cheap RYOBI drill press, tapped the head and work holder with 10/24 for rigid holding
and upgraded to better chuck,
and its pretty damn accurate now.  0.002"
sometimes i do "super light" milling work on it...

do i see part of a taig mill on your pictures !

 

[Gold]

sometimes i do "super light" milling work on it...

do i see part of a taig mill on your pictures !

This press can't take the lateral force. The chuck falls out when I try.  I'm pretty accurate with my marks these days. I've started using machinists ink for crisp marks. I'm getting the technique down for landing the bit right on the money.

I'd like to stiffen up the head a bit too. There is a bracket on the rear of the head that can take a jig to lock the spindle in place. I can run a pice of bar stock straight back from the bracket towards the post. I can attach another piece of bar stock to the post with a collar. Then cut slots in one of the pieces of bar stock so they can lengthen and shorten when I move the head out and in along the Y axis.

I put the Taig up for sale but it didn't sell. I think I'll keep it. It's too small to do a lot of the stuff I want do like chamfer the edge of a 19" faceplate.  But it's good for slots and other things I can't do with the drill press.

 

[kambo]

my chuck use to fall out too...
tried to hammer it in while its "hot" with very cold arbor but didnt work for long. i superglued mine  ;D

selling/shipping  a taig would be difficult. its weigh  almost ton and a half, and packing would be another issue unless u kept the original crate.  they now have almost zero backlash table... but funny, they only used one screw, instead two to pull against each other for true zero backlash!

 

[Gold]

my chuck use to fall out too...
tried to hammer it in while its "hot" with very cold arbor but didnt work for long. i superglued mine  ;D

selling/shipping  a taig would be difficult. its weigh  almost ton and a half, and packing would be another issue unless u kept the original crate.  they now have almost zero backlash table... but funny, they only used one screw, instead two to pull against each other for true zero backlash!

I have the big chuck in the picture and a small chuck I use for small holes. I use both so I can't permanently mount one chuck.

You must be thinking of something other than the Taig. It weighs probably between 75 and 100 lbs. I can pick it up with no problem.

 

[kambo]

I have the big chuck in the picture and a small chuck I use for small holes. I use both so I can't permanently mount one chuck.

You must be thinking of something other than the Taig. It weighs probably between 75 and 100 lbs. I can pick it up with no problem.

i use this for small holes...
Sensitive Drill Feed
https://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=3790&category=

75-100lb is a ton for me )) not much of a muscle power here