Thread: A Woodworking Drill Press – heavily customised

G'day

I suppose I could put this into Machinery, but I've opted for this sub-forum for two reasons: a) there was plenty of woodworking involved in it's construction and b) it's specifically designed and built for woodworking.

I’ve had this project on the go for quite some time now, and in a previous thread I documented the start of it. I have always wanted a bench top drill deck that offers much more than the usual assortment on the market (with all of their numerous shortcomings – the tiny throat and vertical travel in particular). I have no space for a pedestal DP, and no desire for one in the confines of woodworking.

Last year I imported this Wabeco unit from Walter Blombach in Germany (it’s of the BYO drill variety) and fitted a Protool PDP 20-2 drill to it. The particular drill was selected for its very high torque in low gear (65 Nm) and high rpm (3000 IIRC) in second gear. It has a strong one handed keyless chuck, and a detachable power lead (very useful).

Many of the operations on the Wabeco Press (as delivered) are not as easy or quick as they could be, and the overall finish screams Made in China. On subsequent re-reading of the Wabeco website they very carefully say that the columns “are very accurate due to precision grinding in Germany” (or similar) and I think that the grinding might be the only German input to the whole machine (apart from the freight and the original concept).

As delivered, with a drill and fence added:


The major features of this unit, and the reasons for the purchase, are:

• A one metre long Z column (vertical)
• A half metre Y column to allow for a very large throat (front to back)
• A Travelling or Cross Table with 80mm Y axis movement and 300mm X axis movement
• The weight (easy enough to move, but heavy enough for stability)

Things that I either dislike or detest, and have since re-engineered are:

• The Depth Limiting system (new system now in place)
• The sloppy rod with two black knobs for raising & lowering (replaced with a timber crank jobbie)
• A similar sloppy rod for the Y axis column, which catches hold of everything (solution – cut the bugger off altogether)
• The two handles for the table movement protrude above the table (particularly the X Axis handle on the right, and this is the one that gets in the way the most anyway). Have cut the plastic handles down and glued a nut to X handle for speed movement with a cordless screwdriver
  
• Using the limited head travel available in the Z axis (80mm) when the return spring is engaged – the last 30mm is bloody dangerous quite frankly because you are fighting the spring. Solution – get the right tension on the column and I can have as much vertical movement as I want and the head stays put when I'm not winding.

I have now more or less finished the development of the Drill Deck up to good usable level. The next phase will be to speed up some of the operations, and to make the final deck (this one has been bastardised from a previous life), and I’ll wait until I’ve used this for a while to see what changes I want to make.

This Deck comes from my old Drill Stand, and I just ripped 100mm from the back of it:


Recently an HNTG Tail Vise became part of my life, and there was only one place in the Barn that I could put it – yup – right where the Drill Deck lives. To accommodate this I have bolted the Deck to a sheet of MDF, which in turn is bolted to two T-Tracks in the bench. It gives me about 80mm to move the Deck back when the Tail Vise is in use.

So now it looks like this:


Yeah I know there’s a lot going on in that pic, so I’ll point a few things out:

• In this pic the whole rig is positioned back for Tail Vise use
• The striped rear Fence
• The front Fence, with T-Track and movable clamp with black rubber feet
• A dedicated cordless screwdriver with a hex head fitted. I use this for motoring along the 300mm X axis travel, adjusting the height of the copper legs (which support the front of the cantilevered deck), and in the future for adjusting the hold-down clamp
• The two-hose dust extraction system, which I recently posted about here
• The remote control that operates the drill and the vac (absolutely the way to go)
• Apparently I’m an Aldi fan (in this pic alone you can see a Taurus Air Compressor, a WorkZone magnet, Remote Control for Power Sockets, and a tmber plane - no waidaminute - that's an HNT Smoother)
  

Here you can see maximum travel (relative to the drill bit)
to the rear and ............................................................And to the right and front:
........


A word on the travelling table, and the extendable Y column:
This travelling table is a dream of a thing to use. Lining up the drill bit to the mark is a snip (especially when you want to move it by a poofteenth), moving to the next hole requires no unclamping of the job – YIPPEEE! I would go as far as to say that these should be mandatory – they are one of those life-changing devices. The Y column has about 350mm (or something) of travel. I rarely move it around, and have it set for about 150mm of throat. That compares with most of the larger drill presses already, but I can get 250mm easily, and that exceeds every spec I think I’ve read.


Here you can see that I’ve left all the fences as they were, and increased the throat by about 150mm (300mm throat):



The business end:


I never use sacrificial inserts – they are technically usable once-only for though-holes. I just place the job on top of an MDF scrap and use it hundreds of times. The small adjustable wrench (left) lives with the deck. The clamp with the rubber feet deserves special mention, as it is so quick and versatile. You can adjust the height of the front and back legs to suit the job, and the middle black knob locks everything down, and therefore releases it all very quickly. It has great strength. To make this even quicker, I will incorporate M6 nuts into the legs to fit the power screwdriver. Or (and I might do both) I can reduce the length of the legs as I’m going to make a stacking front fence to accommodate different job heights (just add another layer to the bottom of the stack). Using a front fence to clamp the job against the main fence is sensational as it creates a channel to push the job through to the next hole to be drilled. For most holes you don’t even need the hold-down clamp, and if I add a strip of non-slip rubber between the front fence and the job it has remarkable holding power to stop vertical drift during drilling. I can clamp the job very firmly in the channel, or allow a bit of slip, as required.


The simple hold-down clamp:



I’m yet to see a Depth Limiting system that is any good, and that includes the OEM version with this Wabeco. The simplest and most effective way to do it is with a collar around the column to stop further downward movement. It’s exceptionally quick and accurate to set – loosen it, push it down and use a block of the depth I want to set the distance below the bottom of the head,and re-clamp the collar. I have experimented with a short rule fitted to the collar, but it can get in the way of things. I may revisit this idea.

Vac hose holder on the left, Depth Limiting collar on the right:



The handle was a ridiculous thing that caught on everything, was terribly sloppy, and just crap to use. The solution is shown here in its first get-me-out-of-Gail mode. This handle (blond part) was previously excommunicated from a Liogier rasp in favour of one of IanW’s crackers. It will be replaced by the first handle that Ian sent me, the shape of which didn’t quite suit my hand perfectly for rasping, but which is perfect for this purpose (the waist is a little thick for rasping). I’ll do this when I replace the very agricultural Merbau shaft with something that has a bit of shape and vizzy (maybe a Houn & Purple Heart laminated jobbie). The shaft is in two pieces either side of the 1” dia steel stump (drill a blind hole with a Forstner bit and then cut in two with another IanW product – a wonderful brass backed Dovetail Saw with a half mil kerf). You can just see the hex nut at the top which joins the two pieces and locks onto the stump. The handle has a marginally oversize hole that goes about 90mm into it – I can slide it off the 5/16” threaded rod (for comfort it must rotate around the rod when I am winding the handle).



Just one of the many many things I love about my Barn:


As a Natural History photographer I am totally switched on to natural light, and the various little peep holes in the Barn give me spot lights that vary throughout the day. At this time of year I can have my drilling position spotlit with the best light source on the planet (better make that near the planet) at around 2pm. Trouble is, I have to work really fast to catch it! This is the photographer’s curse – ephemeral light, and we always first see it at its peak.


At the moment I’m very satisfied with the Deck’s capabilities. There will be improvements to be made, including those that I have documented above. I had planned to box in the base (for looks as well as anti-dust) but the travelling table rules this out. All I would be able to put in is a low wall and that would only serve as a dust and chip catcher.

I have attached this as a PDF if you want to see the pictures in greater clarity. Better ignore the uncorected tpyos though.

Cheers, and thanks for having a squiz
Brett