Monday, August 26, 2013

Drill press mods

I've had this drill press for a few months now and haven't written about it before because well, it's a drill press. It drills. What of it. 
Now that I've made some mods to it it becomes a bit more interesting. 


First up the chuck key sits on the right side via a rare earth magnet super glued to the body. The benefits of this include. 
Having a home for key making it less likely to head down to the pub when I don't have time to chase it down. 
No chain or rope to get tangled in the drill. 
And thanks to the power of the rare earth magnet it doesn't vibrate off. 

The drill comes with a depth gauge. The only use this has is as a depth stop. So I added a modified digital calliper. 
The main advantage with this is that it can be zeroed in any position
To avoid modifying the lid so it could still open I cut the calliper as short as possible.
Works a treat. 

Lastly is the table. Most drills come with a circle cast iron table. Due to the design it's very difficult to clamp anything to the table. 
This table is bolted to the original and features dual t tracks for the fence to slide along and a removable centre piece. I made a few extra of these when I made the table. 


Lastly
The floor in my shed isn't level so the dill rocked like a rocking horse. 
The solution I came up with was to use two blocks of wood with embedded nuts and 4 100mm m12 bolts. Now I can level the drill and I get a few more cm of height. Win!

Future mods include fitting Cree led's to the light arm as the current ones almost match a single tea light candle as far as light output is concerned. 

That's it for now.

Al 

1 comment:

  1. Al.
    1. A modified digital calliper? Too smart.
    2. Magnet. nuff said
    3. The expanded timber work top. genius.

    You should be on Mythbusters, grow a moustache.

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