Small Drill Press

[spec]

Thanks Keep- very informative.

spec

 

[tcmtech]

Hmm, I have heard a few criticisms of Dremel equipment in general.

Mine has always been the price they charge for their consumables.

A 5 pack of their 1.25" cutoff wheels costs more than a 9" heavy duty grinding disk for my big dewalt angle grinder a 12" cut off disk for my 12" chop saw or both combined if they are on sale. WTF is that about?

 

[Mosaic]

I have a Proxxon compound table that I hope to add some precision motor control to. One day I want to make an automated PCB drill system with it. Then possibly a small mill.
https://www.proxxon.com/us/micromot/27100.php

 

[spec]

Mine has always been the price they charge for their consumables.

A 5 pack of their 1.25" cutoff wheels costs more than a 9" heavy duty grinding disk for my big dewalt angle grinder a 12" cut off disk for my 12" chop saw or both combined if they are on sale. WTF is that about?

Yeah, know what you mean. The biggest rip off in my opinion are printers. They flog the printers off cheap and then charge an arm and a leg for a few drops of ink.

spec

 

[throbscottle]

Any pictures TC?
spec

I took photo's as I went whilst making it, intending to write an Instructable, but didn't get round to doing so. I thought I had a picture of it in it's final form which I posted in another thread quite a long whiles ago, but can't find it. So here's the pictures I took as I went along, but it doesn't have power connectors or chuck yet. I also added a microswitch to turn the motor on when the handle is pulled down, and off again when it goes up.

Notes:

• I left the back part of the bracket with rectangular(ish) wings then cut them triangular after folding so I'd get the corners right.
• There is a spring under the sliding block on each post. Mine came out of cheap speed clamps that broke.
• The procedure for drilling the vertical holes was: drill one bottom piece and the sliding block, put a post in the hole to hold them together, drill the other hole, fasten the block down to the base and use it as a guide to drill through the bottom block.
• The pin on which the operating lever hinges is just a long wood-screw. I threaded a bit of aluminium tube onto it, which is now fixed into the lever
• I experimented with making sleeves out of sheet copper to go inside the holes in the sliding block, but it was more trouble than it was worth. so it's just plain wood sliding up and down the steel.

 

[DirtyLude]

I have a large drill press and I'm not having any issues you discussed. I use the 1/8" shank drill bits you can get super cheap on e-bay now. When I first started years ago you had to special order them. I can run through holes quickly.

Best tip I can give is shine a light through the bottom of your drill surface up through the PCB. I have a work light underneath and it shines up through the PCB material giving the via or hole super contrast.

 

[spec]

I took photo's as I went whilst making it, intending to write an Instructable, but didn't get round to doing so. I thought I had a picture of it in it's final form which I posted in another thread quite a long whiles ago, but can't find it. So here's the pictures I took as I went along, but it doesn't have power connectors or chuck yet. I also added a microswitch to turn the motor on when the handle is pulled down, and off again when it goes up.

Notes:

• I left the back part of the bracket with rectangular(ish) wings then cut them triangular after folding so I'd get the corners right.
• There is a spring under the sliding block on each post. Mine came out of cheap speed clamps that broke.
• The procedure for drilling the vertical holes was: drill one bottom piece and the sliding block, put a post in the hole to hold them together, drill the other hole, fasten the block down to the base and use it as a guide to drill through the bottom block.
• The pin on which the operating lever hinges is just a long wood-screw. I threaded a bit of aluminium tube onto it, which is now fixed into the lever
• I experimented with making sleeves out of sheet copper to go inside the holes in the sliding block, but it was more trouble than it was worth. so it's just plain wood sliding up and down the steel.

Hell TC- you don't mess about with information. Thanks a lot.

One question. Did you use one of the brass collect chucks from eBay to attach the tungsten carbide twist drills to the motor shaft?

spec

 

[spec]

I have a large drill press and I'm not having any issues you discussed. I use the 1/8" shank drill bits you can get super cheap on e-bay now. When I first started years ago you had to special order them. I can run through holes quickly.

Best tip I can give is shine a light through the bottom of your drill surface up through the PCB. I have a work light underneath and it shines up through the PCB material giving the via or hole super contrast.

Hi DL,

I would guess that you have a have a fairly high quality drill press and, as you say, you are using big shank drills.

The type and precision of the chuck, and play in the bearings and slides on some large machines makes using small drills awkward although, as a general philosophy with machine tools, the bigger the better. Many chucks only close to around 1 mm, especially the chucks you get on DIY tools.

My own preference is to use single shafted drills- I can't rationalize this though.

Many years ago I bought a precision chuck for the tail stock on my old lathe and it transformed the lath for small work. The chuck was pretty expensive though.

In the lab at work we had a superb PCB drill press. It was ancient and solid and the drill speed was phenomenal. It had sets of taper collet chucks which you changed to suit the drill shaft. Although it was a pain to have to keep changing chucks, it was a superb machine to use- dead accurate and you rarely broke a drill bit. It got scrapped in the end but was too big to take home, or I would have had it.

spec

 

[Les Jones]

At the moment I use a Minicraft drill mounted in a modified Black & Decker drill stand. The main sliding part is made from the guide bar and bearings removed from an old dot matrix printer. The rear anti rotation bar is also from an old dot matrix printer. It is located by a brass strip either side of it which can be adjusted to take up any play. (I built this before I had a milling machine so I could not line up a proper sliding bearing accuratly enough.) Notice I have use the longest spring I could find to counterbalance the weight of the moving parts. This was to minimise the change in the counterbalance force over the distance of travel.


The parts were only tack welded together to reduce the risk of distortion.
The bearings and chuck on the Minicraft drill are very good compared with a Dremmel. I do not know what happend to Minicraft as they no longer seem to be available. (Does anyone know ?)

Les.

 

[JimB]

Very inventive Les, I like it.

JimB

 

[spec]

At the moment I use a Minicraft drill mounted in a modified Black & Decker drill stand. The main sliding part is made from the guide bar and bearings removed from an old dot matrix printer. The rear anti rotation bar is also from an old dot matrix printer. It is located by a brass strip either side of it which can be adjusted to take up any play. (I built this before I had a milling machine so I could not line up a proper sliding bearing accuratly enough.) Notice I have use the longest spring I could find to counterbalance the weight of the moving parts. This was to minimise the change in the counterbalance force over the distance of travel.

View attachment 103252 View attachment 103253 View attachment 103254 View attachment 103255
The parts were only tack welded together to reduce the risk of distortion.
The bearings and chuck on the Minicraft drill are very good compared with a Dremmel. I do not know what happend to Minicraft as they no longer seem to be available. (Does anyone know ?)

Les.

Very good Les.

spec

 

[throbscottle]

Hell TC- you don't mess about with information. Thanks a lot.

One question. Did you use one of the brass collect chucks from eBay to attach the tungsten carbide twist drills to the motor shaft?

spec

Yes I did. At first I was using steel bits and had to tighten the chucks so much the outer sleeve split. But I had to get a bigger chuck (and change the motor for one with a bigger spindle) for the TC bits, and have had no problems with it as it's a close fit and very little tightening required.

I also tried to make a faster drive with the spindle from a bigger, slower motor by taking the insides out and cutting it's case a bit shorter so it was just a spindle sticking out both ends of its casing, put a pulley on one end and a chuck on the other end, then drove it with a small belt from a fast, small motor with a smaller pulley. The result, not much faster, a lot less powerful, and a little bit wobbly. So it's just got a motor again, nothing fancy! Ho hum....

 

[throbscottle]

You can also get a pillar drill from Lidl who have them once in a while. They do quite a nifty mini-drill too and various kits of accessories. You just have to keep looking out for when they have them.
I started making a pillar drill out of wood and steel racking about 5 years ago. Still not working properly, shelved until I can be bothered

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Minicraft: Looks like our buddies Proxxon: www.proxtools.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=276