Thread: Wip – my Wabeco drill press project - a DP for wood drilling

After unpacking anything, I am always commanded by one of the three cats to get the box into a cat-ready state. This means removing big staples, cutting "hassle holes" in the sides etc. This box was no exception, but was no where near as popular as the Woodpeckers boxes. Perhaps they prefer the possible smell of the Woodpeckers Shed Dogs (3 apparently).

All the Wabeco components are very easily assembled. Curiously, there were no instructions included, but these are available online.




The first thing that I noticed was how robust this unit is. In its current location (not final) I only have it secured to the bench with one bolt, and yet the amount of wobbling in the drill head is minimal. By the time it is properly bolted down, and has the important timber beam to secure the top of the column to the wall it will be very solid indeed. The rack and pinions (2 of them) both run pretty smoothly, with very few slightly rough areas, and I imagine this will improve with a bit of wearing in. Even with the horizontal arm out about 2/3 of its travel it is still solid. I can’t see that I’ll need any more than this – at this distance it yields a throat of 250mm and that’s great! There is a 100mm lever to achieve lateral movement, and this is small enough to not get in the way, so will probably remain as is.

THE HEAD



The arm for adjusting the head height is considerably longer and my first thought was to replace it with a McJings wheel about 250m diameter, but this would be reasonably expensive, and pretty big & cumbersome. After a bit of thought I decided that I just need to put two small horizontal handles coming out of the main handle, which will achieve the same result in a compact way. The head is clamped to the column with two M8 cap bolts, and this allows for variable tension. At the right tension the head can be raised or lowered with ease, but does not drop under its own weight (including the heavy Protool drill). This is exactly what I wanted, because it allows for unlimited chuck travel, and therefore I can raise the head to change to a longer bit without moving off the mark, or I can drill a hole that is more than 80mm deep without having to fight the end of the return spring travel. This whole mechanism would be well improved by incorporating a polyethylene sleeve around the column. This would also stop the grey slurry that will build up from running cast aluminium over a steel pole (and Camellia oil will make it necessarily worse). The head is prevent from lateral movement by simply slipping two fat washers (provided) over the end of the M8 cap bolts, and the washers sit in the column channel acting like rollers. On delivery, one of these was out of whack and I couldn’t slip the head onto the column rack, but a slight adjustment solved this. A polyethylene sleeve could have a block on it (what do you call that?) to run in this channel, and that would be even better.

There is also a return spring mechanism which allows for 80mm travel, and this is engaged by simply tightening a third bolt to secure the bottom of the return spring mechanism to the column. I plan to change this cap bolt to a wing nut (if it yields enough pressure) or an M8 thread with a lever – reaching for a hex wrench all the time will become annoying. The are mm graduations cast into the side of the head to give a depth gauge reading against the bottom of the spring mechanism, but it’s all been black enamelled and therefore quite useless (apart from any wild inaccuracies that casting will provide). IMO a depth scale should be on the front because it’s referred to during drilling, so a modification to this will be required, and this will probably be in the form of an LCD readout at a later stage.

There is a depth stop post, also secured by an M8 cap bolt, and this needs to be changed to a wing nut. However, I still prefer my method of a clamp around the column, underneath the head, for depth stopping. The clamp stays in position regardless of how high the head is wound up, and therefore gives repeatability. One of the advantages of this is that to achieve a given depth I can just put a block of timber (with a thickness of the required depth) between the bottom of the head and the clamp, tighten the clamp, remove the block, and it’s then exact (and without measuring). Clearly this does not always apply for different depths, but I have a special series of wood blocks in the common dimensions for depths that I use.

Overall, I’m very happy with the head mechanism.

THE CROSS TABLE
I purchased this thinking that it may get some use reasonably often, or that I might attach a timber deck to it for almost permanent use. I believe that the latter will prevail. The Acme screw mechanisms work very smoothly, although one is slightly tighter than the other (no biggie). Very small adjustments can be easily made. 1/10mm increments are theoretically possible (0.1mm is representing by a 2mm spacing on the turning ring) but there is a little play in the arm which probably renders this fine adjustment useless. Again, no biggie because I would be unlikely to use it in this way – I prefer to move the job until the Brad point is registered with a mark in the job. The Cross Table has 280mm X travel and 120mm Y travel, and that’s plenty for my purposes. Being able to have the Brad point sitting 1mm above the job and move the job around is just fabulous. The Cross table is quite high, but I’ve got a metre of column to play with.

Apart from the smoothness of the table, the most impressive thing is that it is rock solid.

There is a design flaw in the table, and it’s a really dopey one. At the top of its arc, the front Y-axis handle is about 3-4mm above the table. This means that if I put a deck on it, or am drilling a large job then I can’t move the table in the Y-axis. This will be easily solved by putting a smaller diameter wheel on to replace the handle, but fer cryin’ out loud – it’s another example of a product not being field tested, as this would have shown up almost immediately. I could rebate the bottom of the timber deck, but that’s a helluva lot of routing (allowing for 280mm X-axis movement and finger clearance) and will only reduce the heft of the deck and make it less strong.

HOW DUMB IS THIS??




IS IT PRECISE?
Out of the box, the answer is an emphatic NO FAQn WAY! First use of a newly arrived Woodpeckers square was to check the perpendicularity of the drill bit to the table. AARRGGHH! It was out by 3mm in 120mm in two directions! If this can’t be corrected then the whole unit would be completely and utterly useless. Picture a drill bit that is perpendicular to the job, and now tilt it back 3 degrees, and to one side by 3 degrees. If you then move the bit down an axis that IS perpendicular to the job then your going to drill a slot, not a hole, and the drill will get buggered in no time flat. No amount of adjusting any of the bolts/clamps in the head made an improvement. I reversed the Hex bar, changed the drill holder to the second one – no good! There was an improvement in the sideways tilt (let’s call that “pitch”), but the “yaw”, or Y-axis angle was the same. There are any amount of places where this error can happen, and they could all compound together. There is also no way of making adjustments – you can hold the drill gun at the right angle, but the clamping just takes it back to the error position.

With some trepidation I decided to put two spacing washers (almost 2mm thick) under the front of the cross table to tilt the table up at the front. Got my Pecker out again – it was bang on! WHO’S YOUR DADDY?! Somehow this also corrected the pitch angle to a woodworking acceptable “less than about 1/3 mm over 120mm”. But I was not out of danger yet – if the drill bit was not parallel to the column then I would still be drilling slots. I got my bigger Pecker square and checked the table for perpendicularity to the column. Santa Maria! It was spot on!

I can tell you that this was an enormous relief! Today I will drill a hole in anger, and see what I get.

THE STEP CLAMPS


I have made some of my own clamps for the prototype decks, and quite remarkably, I finished up with a design that is VERY similar to the step clamps. These are pretty quick to put in place, and even though there is light between the meshing teeth, they are rock solid, and the job is very firmly held. These are designed for metalworking and I need to glue some non-slip rubber to the face that holds the job, to prevent marring (although there was very little on the Spotted Gum piece that I tested them with). The 58 piece set was about $50, so pretty good value. All the pieces have been blackened to slow down rust, but I went over them with Camellia Oil to be safe (internal and external threads as well). The holder that is provided is pretty useless, so I’ll make something similar to one of my drill bit stands. All up, well pleased with these.

This is my clamping system from the prototype, and is designed to run in T-tracks on a Y-axis. This will be resolved when I build the new timber deck.



At the end of the second day I am still very pleased with the whole system, although some improvements can be made, and some of those are necessary. It’s starting to feel like I will achieve a much better, and far more versatile result than I would with one of those underpowered Chinese bench top jobbies for $300.

Cheers, FF

Looking good.

Where did you get the step clamp kit. Cheapest I could find was about $100

https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/Search?S=step+clamp

That was Wabeco as well yowie. This one is the same as mine, which confirms what I had thought - Wabeco gets some of its stuff from China (I hardly think H&F are importing from Germany)