Iggy's thread about his new drill press reminded me that I need help in removing the step pulley on the drill press in order to replace the two bearings that it rides on. It's fairly quiet when the quill is retracted, but becomes increasingly noisy as the quill is lowered. It sounds like its coming from the area of the pulley rather than inside the casting. I'm assuming it's a bearing. I suppose it could be something wrong with the splines on the spindle, although I doubt it - there's no slop in the splines when I twist the spindle.
There's a cap containing the upper bearing on top that can be pried off after removing the three bolts that hold it in place. I started to remove that, then chickened out and decided to post here before I broke something. That bearing cap is pretty tight. First question: Is there an easy way to remove that bearing cap?
Second. Once that cap's removed, how do you remove the step pulley from the lower bearing without breaking the pulley or something else? I assume the pulley's going to be sitting on its lower bearing pretty tightly since the upper one seems tight. That upper arm is in the way, so it looks like it would be difficult to put some sort of puller over the pulley.
Here's a photo of my machine I uploaded to the drop box.
The parts breakdown for this machine is here
RWL