Drill press upgrade...

dirtyphil

dirtyphil

Joined
Mar 19, 2014
Messages
165
I currently use a Harbor Freight benchtop drill press. Drilling 1/4”holes takes a while even with a pilot hole. I was thinking of upgrading to a Grizzly heavy duty 12” bench top press. Will I see a big difference? I’d like to drill 3/8” holes a little easier, or be able to drill out the finger hole on a karambit. Thanks, Phil
 
dirtyphil said:
I currently use a Harbor Freight benchtop drill press. Drilling 1/4”holes takes a while even with a pilot hole. I was thinking of upgrading to a Grizzly heavy duty 12” bench top press. Will I see a big difference? I’d like to drill 3/8” holes a little easier, or be able to drill out the finger hole on a karambit. Thanks, Phil
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Yes you will. I went from a Harbor Freight drill press to the Grizzly 12" bench top and the difference is remarkable. The biggest boon to going with a drill press like the Grizzly is the ability for the slower speeds. That helps considerably when drilling steel.
 
dirtyphil said:
I currently use a Harbor Freight benchtop drill press. Drilling 1/4”holes takes a while even with a pilot hole. I was thinking of upgrading to a Grizzly heavy duty 12” bench top press. Will I see a big difference? I’d like to drill 3/8” holes a little easier, or be able to drill out the finger hole on a karambit. Thanks, Phil
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Get some good quality HSS dril bits ......If drill bits spin and was properly sharpened , will CUT no matter on which drill press they are .
 
One easy upgrade to a drill press is pulling off the old motor and sticking a 3/4Hp or 1HP 3 phase motor and a VFD on to replace it. This gives you easy to dial variable speed. A simple $20 optical tachometer can give you exact speed readout for setting the VFD. Put a white stripe on the top of the quill pulley and mount the tach on the cover over the stripe.
 
flatblackcapo said:
That looks very interesting. Do you happen to have any pics of your set up?
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When I quoted that I forgot I had to make a Vee pulley for the motor. The Vee belt pulley that came on motor didn't fit the Vee belt on drill press. Also it takes a bit of "jury rigging" to make the motor fit. How the mount will be handled will depend on your drill press. It does work good - give full power from 100 RPM to around 4500 rpm of motor speed in 100 rpm steps with digital display of speed. Of course the actual spindle rpm will depend on how the pulley ratio used. In my case the spindle RPM is from around 35 rpm to 1800 rpm range. Since it's a servo motor it's got pretty much full power over the full range which makes it really good for tapping. It's also got reverse with press of a button.

So far, I'm very pleased with the servo motor installation. Better than 3ph with VFD it seems, and less expensive.

Ken H>
 
Ken H> said:
When I quoted that I forgot I had to make a Vee pulley for the motor. The Vee belt pulley that came on motor didn't fit the Vee belt on drill press. Also it takes a bit of "jury rigging" to make the motor fit. How the mount will be handled will depend on your drill press. It does work good - give full power from 100 RPM to around 4500 rpm of motor speed in 100 rpm steps with digital display of speed. Of course the actual spindle rpm will depend on how the pulley ratio used. In my case the spindle RPM is from around 35 rpm to 1800 rpm range. Since it's a servo motor it's got pretty much full power over the full range which makes it really good for tapping. It's also got reverse with press of a button.

So far, I'm very pleased with the servo motor installation. Better than 3ph with VFD it seems, and less expensive.

Ken H>
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Thanks for the info, Ken.
 
Ken, it would seem like that motor might be just the ticket for modifying a 1x40 or a 2x42.
 
Remember that motor is only 3/4 hp, but I do think it would do great for most anything a 3/4 hp (or 1hp?) variable speed is needed. Remember, a 3 ph motor running at 20% speed (say 800 SFPM?) is only using a fraction of it's rated hp where a servo motor still has most of it's rated hp at low speed.

If I didn't already have a 1 hp 3 ph with VFD on my G0602 lathe I'd install a servo motor on lathe. I do think it would be better than current motor. Had I found the servo motor before I ordered a 1 hp motor for a disk grinder I'd using the current lathe motor/VFD setup for a disk grinder and get the servo for lathe. Since I seldom run lathe much over 60% power I suspect the 3/4hp servo would have plenty (if not more) power than I'm currently using on lathe.
 
3/4 hp motor is more then enough for us.Weak motor can save you in many situation when drilling . . powerful one motor/drill press will cut your fingers in split of second before you know what happen :D I can stop my small drill press with one hand :thumbsup:
 
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