coal-dusted Walker-Turner 15" Drill Press Rebuild

[FliesLikeABrick]

A coal-fired power plant shut down nearby, and I picked up a few items from there in their auctions last summer. This included a few large new old-stock pressure tanks for water systems ($25 for two tanks that are $800/ea new), a flammables storage cabinet, and a 1998 Ford Ranger.

Amongst this was a Walker-Turner drill press for $125. This may have been a good deal, another one in the same auction on the same day went for twice that -- but that one was in the indoors machine shop. This one was out in the plant, covered in coal dust and showing decades of rough use.

Here was one of the pictures available during bidding:



Upon getting it home I gave it a quick triage




Here it is in the shop near my Powermatic 1200. The Powermatic 1200 is much heavier, more powerful, larger in almost every way. However the W-T is almost the same height and would cover probably 80% of the same use cases. This aligns with the titling of "Light Heavyweight" on the badge


Triage continuing...

• 1/2 hp 3ph motor
• One of the downfeed handles is missing, and the other two are missing their ball/knob ends
• Does not have the optional jackshaft in the middle for slower range of speeds
• It came with a motor starter and transformer that were mounted to the wall. The auctioneer was patient enough to let us remove those and take them. The transformer provided 110v from the 208v 3 phase available (no neutral was run to the area of the machine). This 110v was in turn used to allow the switch to provide an external pilot to the motor starter.
• The thing is filthy; coal or coal-adjacent dust everywhere
• Nothing moves/slides nicely
• This thing must have been used to solve all manner of plant issues when people weren't being gentle or overly careful with what they were doing , it just felt like it had a rough (but not abusive) 5+ decades in service
• Measurable runout in the spindle, approximately 0.010" with the quill retracted and .020" with it extended
• Castings all appeared in good shape, except for a few holes drilled in the table

Begin the disassembly, every part of this would need a cleaning and fresh lubrication. Stripped every part off the upper casting


As well as the motor, covers, wiring


Everything that fits is destined for the ultrasonic cleaner (purple Simple Green diluted ~ 4:1)



I wouldn't be surprised if the grease in the cone pulley bearings is original. Note how black the pulley is, it is absolutely caked in sticky dust.


I put everything in the ultrasonic cleaner, including the cone pulley to dissolve the grease out. These bearings in the W-T cone pulleys have a reputation for being extremely difficult to remove without damaging the pulley, which I did not want to risk. The bearing otherwise seemed healthy.

While all the small parts were taking a bath, I wanted to disassemble and inspect the quill further. I don't know how someone did this, unless they dropped the quill when it was outside the machine; but the top of the quill was peaned over pretty badly. This prevented removal of the spindle and bearings


I took a die grinder with a carbide burr to the damage, which then allowed the bearings and spindle to be removed.

With the spindle removed, I could chuck it up in the lathe and evaluate the runout



I roughly located where the bend was, and set about trying to correct this. At first I started in the vise, with some pieces of aluminum and brass to let me concentrate the bending forces while avoiding damaging the surface



I removed most of the runout this way, but could not overcome the elasticity of the remaining bend -- even with the cheater pipe shown. At this point I walked over to a neighbor's house and used his shop press to accomplish the same task. At first I over-corrected slightly, but then through numerous iterations I did get the runout sufficiently improved for the future life of this aging machine.

Each iteration consisted of measuring+marking the runout in the lathe at home; then walking next door; setting up in the press; making the [estimated] adjustment; then coming back home and re-marking to repeat the process.

Ultimately I got the runout down to approximately .002", and couldn't really do better than this without more time and easier access to a press (shorter distance and time between measuring/marking+adjusting).

I did also buy a MT1 replacement quill assembly on ebay. However, I did want to try to repair this spindle since it had the JT33 with the retaining collar. This has specific value with where I intended to use this drill press (explained further down)

At this point the parts in the ultrasonic were all clean
Pulley ready for new grease, and the casting is a completely different color and texture than before.




I gave all the other parts a quick shot of light oil or wax (depending on where they were being reinstalled), to prevent rust while they sat waiting for reassembly.

Now turning to the major structural components...

These were scrubbed down with Simple Green and a drill brush inside, then eventually taken outside where I hit them with some heavier degreaser, more drill brush, and the pressure washer. Not perfect, but this is a repair rather than a restoration.



Dried off, and I hit everything with some paste wax to resist rust.




I will write up the rest of the repair and assembly in a reply to this post due to the attachment limit

 

[FliesLikeABrick]

The reassembly of all the mechanical parts was uninteresting. With everything cleaned and fresh grease on the various sliding surfaces, there were no issues since this machine still showed no signs of major trauma

It is now time to turn attention to the motor and wiring it up for use in the home shop on 240v single phase.

I happened to have a spare VFD after changing the one on the Powermatic, so I temporarily wired this up on the bench with a cobbled-together setup. The power strip above the bench intentionally carries power from both split phases, and from another test/repair task 5 years ago I still had this suicide adapter - 2x 5-15P in, 1x 6-20R out. Yes, something like this should never exist, but it was still intact in a box of electrical parts.

Upon tuning the VFD for this motor and running it, it was obvious that it needed new bearings.


Opening the motor up, it was no mystery why the bearings have expired


A coating of abrasive dust on everything, with it piled in the bottom of the end covers


Pulled the bearings out of the cover and off the rotor without any issues



With everything cleaned up, it was an easy task to put the motor back together and re-test. It ran perfectly silently -- you couldn't hear the motor at all over the fan in the VFD.

The reassembly of the drill press continued, with the motor and motor mount going on



While mounting the motor, I figured it was a good time to figure out how I would mount the VFD and contactor or motor starter. I used a scrap of 1/8 aluminum sheet, and drilled+notched holes that would allow it to mount with the motor on the motor mount. There may be other ways to do this, but this is the same way I met the need on the Powermatic a couple years ago


Next was to make a missing handle for the downfeed spindle. The thread in the hub and the handles was 7/16-20, and I happened to have an off-cut of 1/2" round stock that was almost the perfect length. I turned that down to length and cut threads on both ends with a threading die.

From an auction in 2020, I picked up a small inventory of knobs and handles of various types. Among these was a set of plastic knobs that would be perfect for the handles on here; except they were 3/8 threaded brass inserts instead of 7/16. I was going to remove the other handles from the hub and turn down the ends for a 3/8 thread, but those handles were peaned or welded into the hub. Overall, tack-welding handles and tools together seemed common in this environment, I found that practice on a few other things I bought from the same place.

So instead, I modified the 3 knobs. The brass inserts were oversized and had enough meat to be drilled out for 7/16 thread




Mounted the VFD, and decided I would like to reuse the switch at the front of the machine for start/stop. I consulted the manual for the VFD and found a basic way to wire the switch into the low voltage controls for spindle start/stop. For now this is wired with 3x 18awg conductors woven together and fished through the housing, however in the future I may replace this with something a bit more appropriate. It is low voltage, low power DC, so it does not pose a safety hazard if damaged in the meantime.




Lastly, I wanted to rewire the motor starter as a means of controlling main power on/off upstream of the VFD. The wiring inside the motor starter was in rough shape due to age. Additionally, a bunch of the wiring was missing from when it was hastily removed from the plant.

I crimped on new terminals and put heat shrink over all the new components. Only one original wire was left, which was in decent condition and fished behind the components - so I left that one alone.

Overall, it needed to be substantially rewired anyway. It was originally wired for 3-phase with an external pilot... whereas now it is single-phase in and out; using the integrated controls.




Mounted on the panel. It may not look like it in the picture below, but there is a reasonable amount of space for the handles on the spindle to clear the face of the starter/contactor.






Finally -- installing into its retirement home. We have a portion of the shop for woodworking, to keep dust out of everything else. With the slight runout left in the spindle (mainly noticeable at full extension but fine if you stay under 4" extension), it seemed suited to a woodworking environment where tolerances should be more forgiving. I do have the MT1 quill assembly, in case I ever want to improve that.

I mentioned earlier that the JT33 suits itself to our future purpose. This is because of the retaining collar. We will occasionally use this as an improvised drum sander or wire wheel or other purposes that result in sideloading the chuck and spindle; which will have a tendency to want to break the taper between the chuck and spindle. The collar is exactly the right answer to that, so I am satisfied with the runout tradeoff for now.

There was some electrical work involved in putting this in its home, but I may start a separate project thread on the months of electrical work we did in the shop. This recent change to extend the wire trough and run a 3-wire 240v circuit was a drop in the bucket by comparison. The neutral is needed for the 120v coil in the motor starter. Or I could have reused the transformer and dropped the neutral -- but I'd rather eliminate the extra component from this project.



Thanks for reading

 

[wachuko]

Very nice!! Thank you for sharing!!

 

[brino]

Geez I love your write-ups and photos.
It's like you take right along for the ride!

Thanks!
Brian

 

[FliesLikeABrick]

Geez I love your write-ups and photos.
It's like you take right along for the ride!

Thanks!
Brian

Thanks. I was on the fence about whether to dig through some of my picture collections and write them up in this style on H-M. With your words of encouragement I will probably do so. They aren't things I did "today" but they will capture various projects in the shop that are shop- or machining-related. I've gathered that the actual project forum is for smaller updates on ongoing projects (for collaborative discussion, problem-solving, etc) -- and that isn't a style I have adopted yet. I prefer this retrospective "debrief" style where I can get all the thoughts out of my head, with pictures inline.

More to come...

 

[jwmelvin]

I like the post-completion debrief, thanks. Definitely nice to see what you did along the way, with the perspective of being finished. Drill press looks great.

 

[FliesLikeABrick]

One thing I forgot to list in the improvements along the story line above -- I did fill in the apprentice marks in the work table with JB weld, to provide a contiguous flat surface and prevent chips from accumulating.






Not as pretty and smooth as when I've done it on other tables in the past, but good enough. Sanded flat and then stoned with WD-40 to keep the pores in my coarse stone from plugging up. The main thing I wanted to fill in was a semicircle around the middle hole, where someone hit the table pretty bad with a hole saw... repeatedly.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

that was great to read, thanks! I have a WT900 and I've often thought of the whole strip it down and paint it thing, but it works just fine as it is. Yours looks great! I don't imagine you'd need the intermediate pulley with a 3ph motor and vfd, you should be able to get the speeds you want with the 5 steps you have and the vfd, especially for woodworking.

I used the collar-retained collet chuck on mine for quite some time. It's surprisingly handy and works very well for what it is.

BTW, the belt covers are super rare, so that's a pretty cool addition to have.