Hamilton varimatic sensitive precision drill press

craqus

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Locally, I found an old Hamilton Varimatic drill press whose former owner was Boeing. I should have dickered a bit on the price but wound up buying it for $200. Not a bad deal considering what these cost originally! But it needed a full teardown and restoration. There's a video of that process here:

Plus I used it to drill a .0135" hole, which is pretty small!


So now it looks great, and functions WAY better. But there's still a bit to do. I'm having trouble locating a replacement belt. There is one on Amazon but the lead time of 4-6 weeks does not give me confidence:

I've also talked with Rebb Industries who still (sorta) support these machines. They're out of stock on a new motor contact disk but are doing a new production run and will charge me around $125 for a new one.

The big question is if I should (or should not) replace the bronze bushings and/or the spindle shaft. I guess I don't need to based on the accuracy of the drill, but if you watch the video you can see a little tremble in the drill bit when I'm drilling the dime. It's hard to determine if I have any appriciable runout or not. Apparently the factory spec on these is .0002" TIR, and mine SEEMS to have .0003" but it's pretty hard to measure. There is some wear on the spindle itself too, but it's pretty minimal. I can only really tell it's there when the spindle is on a surface plate and there's a light behind it. I don't know what my expectations should be, but I've come so far with the restoration it's tempting to just go all the way.

Open to ideas.
 
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