I am looking to buy a Drill Press for my hobbies. I mainly will be drilling Aluminum, wood or plastic, but will be drilling steel on occasion.
I also want this to do light duty milling with a moveable vise. I have checked Home Depot, Lowes, Sears but am uncertain of what model to buy. I don't want a 3 phase press and want my price to be under $300 if possible. Can anyone recommend a heavy duty quality press?
Thanks in advance
Drill presses are for drilling. The method of attaching the chuck prohibits the decent usage as a mill. If you really plan on a milling operations on your drill press, go buy one of the mill/drills that will handle that job. You do lose some of the ability to drill large objects that a floor drill pres will handle but you are looking at a comprimise anyway.
-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!
Wood -- high speed.
Steel -- low speed.
Bad plan. If you want to do milling, buy a milling machine. You can drill holes with a Mill. Milling with a drill pres is risky, as the chuck may not be inclined to remain in the machine, and when it goes, it may go fast, in a random direction. If you truly must do this, invest in a flack jacket and a good helmet, with a face shield, just in case.
Al Moore
Actually, you can still drill the end of long objects with a mill-drill. The head on the mill-drill rotates on the round column. Sure, that means you lose alignment when you raise or lower it, but it also means you can swing it off to the side to clear the table. I just drilled a new bolt-hole pattern on some car axle flanges a couple weeks ago using this method.
-Mike Miller
You really don't want to do this. Trust me, I tried it, and ended up buying a mill/drill about a month later. You just cannot take any depth of cut to speak of and keep a decent surface finish. You'll likely be taking cuts of 0.005" to 0.010" max if you're doing any kind of milling, and still ending up with horrible finishes/tolerances. You'd be better of to just use a hacksaw and a file. It'd be faster in the long run.
Do yourself a favor and buy a mill or mill/drill. The small ones available from Harbor Freight, Homier, Grizzly, etc... are available for less than $500. They're actually pretty handy, considering you can get them with an R8 Taper and they have a dovetail Z axis.
You'll probably not listen to our advice and try it anyway (Hey, that's what I did. :)) so I'll offer one piece of invaluable advice. Wear the safety glasses and a cup, because your chuck WILL work it's way loose from the morse taper, and more than likely it'll hit you. Just be prepared and protect your two most valuable areas.
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