Thread: I need a drill press

If you're going to just drill wood, any drill press will do. If you want to drill steel, you need a robustly-built drill press with many more features.
12 or 16 speeds is desirable for steel, because steels and alloys vary greatly in their drilling requirements, and you need a range of different drill speeds to prevent drill burnout.

Floor drills are much more versatile than bench drills, and there's nothing more frustrating than finding you have a fabricated item that needs to be drilled and it won't fit in the drill press.
The basic requirement of a drill press is that it be robust in construction. Look at the size of the support post. On cheap drill presses, it's a small-diameter, thin section, tubular post that can bend when you place heavy pressure on the chuck feed.

The method of table attachment to the post also sorts the men from the boys. The cheap drill presses have a single bolt holding the table to the collar that slides up and down the post. Feed pressure soon sees this style of table bend downwards.
Look at a professional engineering drill press and you'll see a major upsizing of components in the construction and build, a massive support post, and a table retained by multiple fasteners and massive castings.

Finally, the most useful additional feature of a drill press for steel drilling is a reversing switch (because drills jam all the time), and the ability to reverse the drill rotation is important.
As a last word, I find that cobalt drills (usually containing around 8% Cobalt) are the only thing to buy - because they resist heat, and edge blunting, better than any standard drill. And of course, you never drill steel without using Trefolex.

I scored a cheap 'Kira' Brand well made old japanese drill press that had a keyless jacobs chuck in it. I've also got a Brobo Waldown drill press that I scored cheap due to being about as rusty as you could imagine before I cleaned it up. Both work excellently are were quite cheap. As long as the bearings / motor are good and it's got a decent chuck, the oldies are still great units. I used to have a benchtop chinese built unit but got sick of it. Better resale value on a decent old used drill press, too.

I have an 8" Delta DP, 5 speed, bolted to one edge of my island shop bench.
I drill and sand and polish and carve with it. Woods and metals, bones and shells.
I have a big ShopVac for dust. You need the speeds.

I liked it so much that I bought a second one to leave at my partner's house in the city.
Up here, they run about $100 each.

I don't have the shop space for a bigger floor stand model. I'd buy a 12" or a 14" if I could.

I think I will go with this one:
https://www.timbecon.com.au/august-s...ty-drill-press

if anyone has any reason to talk me out of it let me know! Seems like the best deal I think. Only issue I think will be minimum drill speed at 160rpm - seems like the better units are down to 120

I think you will find that will be excellent.

I just checked my (dream) drill press in my shed, the slowest it does is 180rpm, which has been slow enough for a couple of big spade bits I used in hardwood a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure just how slow it was, but I was taking 30mm out of old red gum house stumps with relative ease and the slowest speed was what I selected. Mind you, I took my time doing it.

Essentially, what you are purchasing, is the modern version of my drill press; please let us know what you think of it after some use.

Mick.