Metal Filling

Even filled they still look naff. Have a look round and see if you can't find an old lathe faceplate. Some of the bigger ones go quite cheap if they are a spurious fitting. Turning a simple stub up will give you a very useful table.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

I've used car body filler in the past. It does not disgiuse the repair but sticks well, smooths off easily and is plenty strong enough unless the holes are enormous.

Bob

another alternative......

if you can get hold of a piece of plate the same sort of size as the table, about 3mm (1/8") thick it could be mounted with countersunk screws this would reducew your working height a little but if fitted with care could re-furbish the machine quite nicely.

if you are feeling realy flush you could get the plate ground by a local engineering company, if you have one you are friendly with they may do it for the price of a beer or two for the bloke that does it, and it will make a nicer job.

the only dissadvantage is you loose any slots you have in the mashine already for holding work down, this may or may not be a problem, if so consider using a thicker plate and tapping some holes for fixtures

it may not be as easy as filling the table but will look a lot better, welding is not realy an option, in my opinion, as drill tables are normaly made from cast iron, welding can be at best difficult, at worst, you crack the casting, to weld cast iron you need the correct grade rods, and have to heat the whole casting up evenly before welding to avoid cracking during cooling,

HTH

I guess it has the added advantage that it doesn't blunt your drills next time you overshoot ;-)

Regards, Tony

FWIW

I did some cosmetic repairs to the table on my drilling machine with standard Araldite loaded with fine cast iron filings (enough to turn it into a stiff putty). After setting hard, I filed it down flush with the surface. It's worn very well (3 years so far), and has improved the appearance significantly.

Mike

In article , Mike Crossfield writes

Have a look at:-

I've only ever used their aluminium-loaded filler, but the steel looks interesting.

HTH -

Why not drill out larger and put in a metal plug?

Mart

Or tap the holes and use them if needed for fixtures, looks like they are suppose to be there?

Lionel

What a good idea!

No no no ! the approved method is to stamp 'Oil' next to the hole !

Andrew Mawson

Been there, done that. The drill came our favourite 'cynical trader' and had a number of oops's on the table. I de-greased the table and then electrolytically cleaned it to get off the crud and rust that were on it. I then cleaned out the oops's with a pointed wire brush in a die grinder. Then I filled them in using a mig welder and iron wire. Nickel rod might have been better but stress is not a major problem if the welds are just covering up the average small holes and craters.

Once all the welding was done I tried to machine it flat on the shaper, failed miserably. If you can't anneal the work you won't be able to cut it, the HAZ around the welds will contain areas with a perfect amount of carbon and sufficiently quickly quenched to be as hard as carbon steels can get (approx

68 Rc). This is as hard as HSS gets as well. In my case, the edges on HSS cutters just smeared over. Carbide tipped tools worked for a bit, but the edges eventually shattered on the hard spots.

The solution in my case was to make up a bracket to hold a 4 1/2" angle grinder in the shaper tool post and grind the mess flat. It was heavy going for the grinder, but I managed to take the lumps of in a couple of passes and then finished with a light pass for cosmetic effect.

The result was a table that was probably flatter than the original, and certainly smoother. The weld repairs are practically invisible unless you know exactly where to look.

The point of all this waffle is that it can be done, but you really need to find somebody with either a large surface grinder or a large heat treating oven to finish the job off.

HTH Mark Rand RTFM