Making A Chinese Drill Press Not Suck So Bad?

[Twmaster]

I've got one of those ubiquitous Chinese 5 speed benchtop drill presses. While I have not taken the head apart yet I was curious if any of you fine modeler folks gone about a rebuild of one of these drills? The aim is to improve (or remove) the loads of spindle run out.

Yes, I know it may be better to go and buy a good drill press. However I like to tinker. So if I can improve what I already have for little more than an investment in time I see that as a win.

 

[Powder keg]

If it fits..... We could shoot it out of my bowling ball cannon)

Mine has the same trouble.

 

[Deanofid]

Here's a "me too". Same kind of drill press, I'll bet. Small five speed bench top thing. This one has serious spindle runout, and has had it since the day I got it NEW. It wobbles all over the place. If I'm worried about the hole being drilled, it gets done on the Taig mill, but that isn't very convenient.

Haven't looked at the spindle. I don't know it's too small for the bearing ID, or if the bearing OD is to small for the head casting.
Don't really know what to do about it but make a new spindle. Quite a project.

Dean

 

[rake60]

It may not be a spindle run out condition.
I have a "Tradesman" bench drill press. (Good luck looking that up! :)
I bought it at Lowe's for less than $150. It too had a considerable run out
when a piece of drill rod was chucked up and checked with an indicator.
.017" run out to be exact. It ended up being a cheap chuck on my cheap
drill press. I replaced the chuck with a "good" one. I paid all of $19USD for it.
Now the drill rod runs out .005" when checked with an indicator.
That's not bad for a drill press!
They were never intended to be a precision machine.

You can spend a lot of money and buy one that will be tighter and more accurate.
I use mine for poking rough holes in materials. It saves a little wear on my mini mill.
If it is a need to be accurate operation, the mini mill will have to do it.

Rick

 

[Twmaster]

I easily have 50-60 thou runout.

I would not be shocked if the chuck was bad. I guess I'll need to knock it off (some sort of taper) and see about runout at the end of the spindle. Then maybe find a replacement taper seat chuck. I'll do that before I try to fix something till it's broke.

 

[rake60]

Now THAT is run out!

I'd be taking that back to the point of purchase to exchange it.

Rick

 

[Twmaster]

I wish it was that easy. I've had this for years.

 

[pete]

Twmaster,
This won't help a whole lot if you can't find the artical but Model Engineer magazine had an artical in it about 8-12 yrs. ago about rebuilding a small cheap drill press, If I remember correctly they rebored the head for larger/better bearings, ect,ect. The guy ended up with a pretty accurate drill press in the end. All my magazines are in storage or I'd dig the magazine out and scan it for you, Maybe this rings a bell for someone here with a collection of these magazines.

If it were me I'd pull your drill press apart and set up the spindle on some V blocks or between centers on your lathe and check it out with a dial indicator. With .050-.060 run out it would be impossible to make it worse. If the spindle checks out then new bearings, New chuck will fix it. With the run out you have, Your drill press is pretty well useless as it is.

Pete

 

[rleete]

Friend recently bought one. Runout was so bad as to be visible without using any indicator. I'd say it was easily .100, if not more. Completely unusable as it was.

Disassembled. No obvious defects or bent parts. Removed chuck from spindle, and found a burr on the chuck was preventing seating correctly, and had scored the taper badly. A few minutes with a stone cleaned it up. Replaced chuck. Runout gone.

 

[phlegmatic]

I have two of these bastards! My guess is that the bearings are very losley adjusted so it can hande such a wide speed spectrum w o running hot?! And the bearing are probably not the nicest top shelf stuff, so on the cheap a plain bearing could be substituted! A future project of mine!

 

[arnoldb]

Had the same problem on my slightly bigger Chinese drill.

The chuck looked OK, so I blued up the morse taper part of the jacobs->morse adapter supplied with the drill, and did a test-fit in my lathe's tailstock. The result was horrible on the morse part, so I bought a good quality new adapter, fit the supplied chuck to it and things are a LOT better - not perfect but passable without buying a new chuck as well.

Regards, Arnold

 

[TroyO]

I guess it's a little old by now.. but someone may find it in a search some day.

I tool mine all the way apart, drilled/tapped the spline shaft for a 1/4-20 thread and put some threaded rod in it. Gives me a nice solid depth stop. I also filled the column with concrete, and got a decent-ish chuck (JT33 taper) and it made the machine a lot better.

 

[Stan]

Like most of the import tools, it is luck of the draw in what you get. The first one I had was turned into scrap but the second one is not too bad. If you take them apart, you find the spindle is a loose fit in the quill and the quill is a loose fir in the head casting. Nothing much you can do about either problem, short of building it into a drillpress. If you are going to do that, you might as well start from scratch.

 

[TroyO]

Well, I gently hammered the splines too... LOL, not sure it was smart but it worked.

I'm actually thinking I will turn it in to a tapping stand instead, I have a floor model now. The floor model has a screw that rides the quill and keeps that snug. I wonder if you could do something like that with the small one?

Anyway... the concrete in the column helps a lot.

 

[Twmaster]

Good points...

I had to sell the old drill press as I lost my house and had very limited space n my moving vehicle.

As luck would have it I was at a swap machinist/blacksmith swap meet today and bought a much older version of the drill press I had for a whopping $20. It has a little runout but is not anywhere near as bad as the other machine.

It's a simple beast and I may take it apart and see about tightening things up. Then again, it was $20 and works well enough...

 

[ianjkirby]

I once had a similar problem with a chinese mill. It would only cut on one tooth of a multi-tooth end mill. In desperation, I removed the spindle, to check it on a lathe. It was as true as one could wish. The problem turned out to be a burr on the shoulder of the spindle where the main bearing sat, not letting the bearing sit correctly. A few minutes with a fine stone, and re-assembled everything and the spindle ran very true. Like most chinese tools, it just needed stripping and cleaning.
Regards, Ian.

 

[Stan]

I'm actually thinking I will turn it in to a tapping stand instead

I posted on that solution some time ago. My original small drillpress base was so badly made that I had to mill it before I could use it for a tap guide. There was a long thread on pillar tools and a picture of my effort is post #28.

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/index.php?topic=1801.15

 

[rockets]

I guess it's a little old by now.. but someone may find it in a search some day.

I tool mine all the way apart, drilled/tapped the spline shaft for a 1/4-20 thread and put some threaded rod in it. Gives me a nice solid depth stop. I also filled the column with concrete, and got a decent-ish chuck (JT33 taper) and it made the machine a lot better.


I coudn't help it....

Did you fill it with concrete so it sinks better when you finally lose all of your patients and throw it in the canal? :big:

 

[TroyO]

Haha, nope. I did it so it would work perfectly... and now it does!

It holds the boat exactly where I want it! ;-) :big:

 

[Deanofid]

Haha, nope. I did it so it would work perfectly... and now it does!

It holds the boat exactly where I want it! ;-) :big:

That's priceless, Troy! ;D

The small one that HF sells may be more valuable as parts than as a drill press. They're $59. For that you get a motor, a couple of cast iron step pulleys, two useful castings in the base and table, a nice piece of large tubing, a suspect chuck, a few steel shafts, a not great but usable belt, and some soft screws.

A guy could make a number of good projects with that stuff. Maybe not a drill press, but other things..