For Those Forced To Use A Drill Press For Milling

i finally gotta x y table busy bee for 50 bucks so i'll be using my drillpress tommorrow.wish me luck.
 
Be careful the chuck doesn't fall out from the side forces unless yours uses a threaded chuck.
MS
 
I epoxied my chuck on my cheap drill press because any drill over 6 mm often caused the chuck to come off.
That was 10 years ago and its still permantly in place.
I did a bit of milling but due to the play in the spindle it was really a waste of time.
 
Some of those cheap drill presses have too much slop in the spindles. The heavier built machines work better but you still have to find out how much material you can remove at a time. If you try to remove too much at a time you will get some real bad finishes or possibly have the head spin on you and break something. Not to mention some have had the chuck come loose.
I have had the head spin on me and pull the part right out of the vise and ruin it. I have also learned how to get better finishes with mine. But because of the limit of material I can remove at a pass it take me 4 or 5 times as long to make something. If you can ever buy a real mill I would say do so. I wish I had when I could afford it.
I don't do much in my shop now because I can't spend the time milling without feeling the effects on my health. It now takes me over a week to do what I could in a day with a real miller because of my health.
I do miss not being able to make stuff that I can't afford to buy. But I guess that is the way things go sometimes. I keep telling people " If it wasn't for bad luck I would have no luck at all"
 
Utterstan I am not sure which x - y table you got, but you may have to make a modification to be able to lock each axis. I had to modify the one I got from Busy Bee a number of years ago.

David
 
I would suggest against it but I too use tools outside of their intended use. I'm not sure I've ever milled on my drill press but I probably have. I do remember using it as a lathe a few times. It didn't work very well but ended up with a usable tool from it. I've even used the power train of my car as the lathe & my caliper bracket as the tool rest to face my rotors. I had a lathe big enough but I couldn't get the rotor off the hubs to face them.

However I am also limited on founds & reuse my arbors for my milling medicine. To pull a chuck I slip a end mill in the chuck & just touch it to the work. It always seems to yank it right off. I don't tighten it more then hand tight & it still pulls the chuck before it pulls the mill out.

My drill press is a junky HF that I bought 20 years ago for $30 or $40 the best I can remember. Sometimes I pull the chuck from just drilling.
 
utterstan said:
i finally gotta x y table busy bee for 50 bucks so i'll be using my drillpress tommorrow.wish me luck.
Click to expand...
I have one of those Chinese tables on my Avey, but I had to do a lot of work on it to make it usable.
 
My Walker Turner drill press has taken a .020 x 2" cut with a fly cutter many times without the chuck loosening. The finish is not perfect but the a couple passes at .002 - .003 usually makes it passable.
I think this chuck is so stuck on that it would take dynamite to remove it.
 
It really is going to depend on the drill in question. There is Arboga, they made mt2 quill "drills" with xy tables. http://www.lathes.co.uk/arboga/page4.html

I have a "light" bench top drill from them without the xy table etc and it is a beast, around 90kg so I have no doubt their bigger version would be an acceptable mill. That said a real mill is worth it. L

Sent from my XT1072 using Tapatalk
 
Yikes!...But ifn' that's all you have, this is a good video (quill up as far as possible to the head, locked (being rigid as possible everywhere) and tiny depths of cut are his main points)...and realizing that an end mill in that drill chuck and drill press clearances (tolerences) will not mill you to precision tolerances if needed without some deep thought such as "sneaking up" on a slot dim. with possibly a series of reground endmills and/or leaving stock for hand filing . (Note: If "side" milling, in X and Y, (say for to get 2 sides square), even just a few thousanths, will be troubles to the part and the machine)....
 
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