Looking for a quality drill press

gunrunner100 said:
Just a suggestion, stay away rom the floormount if you want to reduce vibration.
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Why's that? Someone gave me a big old delta that is on a floor stand and pretty heavy though it looks like it should probably be bolted down ... What's the issue?
I haven't much expierience beyo d small bench top models...
 
Other than the obvious "drilling holes" what are you going to do with it? Does it need precision? Are you trying to drill 3" holes in hard steel? If its for the odd home project Home Depot has a ridged model for around $300 that works quite well.
 
Don't buy a cheap drill press, I would qualify anything in your budget that is new as cheap
because it will not be a rigid setup unless your are drilling very small holes. A good altrernative is to buy a used
benchtop milling machine, something that will be much more rigid than a $500 drill press,
look at something like the King PDM30 in good used condition, I think you would be happier with this.
BB
 
Look for heavy, real heavy, older American iron that hasn't been too abused, there is a few nice older heavy drill presses popping up now and then on kijiji, Craigslist or eBay.

As with all machine tools, weight helps with reducing chatter, flex and vibration. Nothing like a 1,000 lb drill press, 4,000 lb lathe, and 3,000 lb mill!!
 
"...What is good for a good price...$500?..." Princess Auto sells Chinese made bench top drills for under $100. As mentioned, it depends on what you're doing with it. An inexpensive drill press will do scope base holes and the like just fine, but not in all rifles. Some receivers are harder than a Liberal's heart.
"...want to drill me some holes..." In what? A hand drill will drill holes.
 
sunray said:
"...What is good for a good price...$500?..." Princess Auto sells Chinese made bench top drills for under $100.
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....and they are crap.

Budget? IMO the suggestion to look at one of the many RF-30 or RF-31 type benchtop milling machines is a good one. They are crude and sort of useable as a mill, but are a more rigid drill press than most of what sells for retail these days.

Some of the sellers (Thomas Skinner and Sons in Edmonton pointed this out to me) have taller columns that give a better clearance under the drill, if that is needed.
They only sold the tall column, Morse taper ones, and said that almost all went to shops looking for a decent drill press.

Other than that, if you want a decent one, look for a used not-Chinese-made one. And try not to get tied in knots when you see the prices. Good tools cost a bit.

The Rf-30/31's are as close to a decent drill press as is available cheaply these days.

Cheers
Trev
 
Here's another question for some of you...
What's a good yet inexpensive 2 axis type vice for my new (to me)delta drill press?
I want to use it to drill and tap some receivers for rails.
 
Tough to get a good press for sub $500. The big old heavy beasts tend to be good.

How much travel do you need?

I have a good old heavy unit, but it only has about 4" travel, so I picked picked up a $200 unit at CT thinking it would be good enough but it had over .0025" runout.... Took it back immediately. Picked up a chinese made press from Busybee tools when they had a crazy good Christmas sale. It had about .006" runout as it was. The chuck appeared to be the suspect, so I replaced the it with a Glacern chuck and that brought the runout down to .0015". Not the best thing ever, but it's the best I could do for sub $400.

busybeetools.com/products/DRILL-PRESS-14IN.-FL%7B47%7DMODEL-3%7B47%7D4HP-LASER-CSA.html

glacern.com/drill_chucks
 
Can-down said:
Here's another question for some of you...
What's a good yet inexpensive 2 axis type vice for my new (to me)delta drill press?
I want to use it to drill and tap some receivers for rails.
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Good yet inexpensive? Nope. Not unless you happen to trip upon a good but expensive XY table at a garage sale.

The Palmgren ones are about as good as can be got, and even being American made, they are still low priced junk and feel like it when being used.

You would be better off buying another decent quality drill press, and set it up with a work light and mounted magnifying glass for drilling like that, so you can just leave it set up. Do careful layout work, properly centerpunch your start points, and carefully zero each hole up under the spindle using some magnification and a wiggler or centerfinder/edgefinder.

Work like that is quite possibly one of the better reasons to own a decent small milling machine. Something along the lines of a Bridgeport or even an A1-S type with the vise dialed in correctly.

Cheers
Trev
 
Thanks trev, I'm more of a woodworker so layout and precision is easy as well as making jigs but I'm new to metalwork. I'm actually pretty good freehand with most tools as well.
I understand there are drill bits that are for starting holes as well that are less prone to wander?
I think the drill press is pretty good a friend sold it to me cheap with a bunch of other stuff when he sold his house. It's a delta from the 80's and probably weighs around 80 lbs or so.
I've seen the cheap Chinese 2 axis vices but I figured if I knew what to look for used maybe I could run into something better...
It does need a light as well if anyone has suggestions there?
 
Well, an 80lb drill press is pretty small. Even the Busy Bee benchtop model I've used for about 30 years is heavier than that. It may be fine for some of your wood working but even then I wonder how often you'd be better with something larger.

First off get one which uses a MT2 taper quill so you can change out chucks easily. This also sets the size of the head to something more heavy and robust so by considering such machines you automatically move up to a nice mid weight size option. Second is to look at the diameter of the column. If you have the choice between two models get the one with the bigger column diameter.

Floor or bench depends on you and your room situation. There's a lot to be said for a bench top model sitting on a reinforced kitchen cabinet drawer lower unit so you can store drills, chucks, vises and other "stuff" used for the drill. And a good size bench top drill press does not impose the sort of limits you may think. At least I only rarely wished for more spindle to table room in over 30 years of using my own.

Since I'm now splitting up my metal and wood area I've bought a second drill press. This time I went with a floor model and did not buy from Busy Bee. I find that the BB options are all too light in the middle weight group and have too small and dainty a table. As it happens I got a King brand model from KBC when they had a big sale on. It has a 3/4 hp motor so I wired it for 220V. But now that means I need to rewire the light for 110v which I haven't done yet. Size wise it's got the same good and heavy head unit and column diameter as my old Busy Bee drill.

An equivalent, near as I can find, would be this General from KMS tools.
http://www.kmstools.com/general-international-17-floor-drill-press-2211

The 13 inch models from both General and King that I saw had too small a column and too small a table and too short a quill stroke. So this one in the link, or the equivalent King that I got, is what I'd suggest for a lifetime sort of tool.

I should note that I've got an issue with the length of the riser rack. It's too "sticky" where it fits in at the base so it binds when I go to turn the table. I've got a modification in mind to add a roller at the base and to shim the notches in the table mount casting to support this better. It's a pain to do but such is life with lower cost tools. The General "should" be better on this aspect if you don't mind paying the extra $70 to $90 that they cost compared to the $329 I paid for my King on sale.
 
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