Peerless Drill press

[rwbuild]

I am interested in buying the Peerless 1600B bench drill press 1/2 HP 12 speed 16mm chuck 190 - 3280 RPM

The salesman reckons they are good quality. $345-00

Pros and cons please would be appreciated or experiences from those who have or used Peerless drill presses

Thanks in advance

[malb]

No background with the brand you mention, but the vast majority of Chinese drill presses are built to a price rather than a standard. One simple check if you can find one on display. wind the feed to about mid range, grab part of the chuck body (not the clamping ring), or insert and lock a drill/bar in the chuck, and grip it, and try to move the chuck body or bar in all horizontal directions. Unless it is totally rigid, the bit will wander around whenever you attempt to start a hole and the hole will start up to 1mm away from the required point. This can happen even if you centrepunch the hole position as unless it is a huge punchmark, the bit might not find it.

You need the chuck about midway through the feed range to eliminate the influence of the quill collar contacting the head casting at full retraction and the influence of travel limits/depth stops etc at full extension.

If you find the display unit passes the above test, then check the unit you are buying before you leave the store with it.

Of the Chinese sourced drill presses I have run this test on, the Hitachi 16mm and the largest Carbatec (20mm? or more) are the only two that have survived this test. The rest are basically made to look like a drill press, but not perform like one. The issue is the poor machining of the quill bore in the cast head of the units, the bore ends up bell mouthed and a loose fiton the quill assembly, allowing it to flap around unless artificially constrained at the extremes of travel.