Thread: Longer post for a drill press

I mounted my drill press near the end of the bench so If I want to drill anything longer I can rotate the head of the drill 90 degrees.
Never needed to do it - yet.

Jeremy,

If you fit a simple home made riser you don't need a track on the post.

Regarding using the extra height. I probably only use it 5 times every 100 holes but when I do it's worth having. It also allows me to leave a standard cross slider vice permanently on the DP table. This is what I use for all my oily messy metal drilling. When required I can attach a clean wooden DP table on top of that - that way the metal chips don't get mixed up in the timber. This quick change arrangement would be difficult to fit on a standard DP, ie you would have to remove the cross slider to fit the table or else you would not have enough room under the chuck. Some folks don't need this arrangement - I guess we all work within what we are used to.

I made a new post for my drill (13mm 5 speed sherline). I found a bit of galvanized water pipe, just a little bit larger in diameter than the existing post ( 2~3 mm) and little over a meter long. I mounted the pipe on a make shift lathe. ( From memory some thing like a couple of plug cut with a hole saw stuck in the end of the pipe and large nails for bearings, driven by a belt round the pipe using a bench grinder as motor ). With the pipe spinning I smoothed it up using a sanding disk in a grinder or belt sander. The goal being to get the pipe smooth.

Of course you can't expect to take 2 or 3 mm off using the above method. I just got the pipe smooth.

The next step is to adjust the size of the holes in the cast iron brackets. You have to remove surprisingly little metal to fit it together. I used a die grinder free hand. The post isn't spinning or any thing so you don't need to be that accurate. But don't try to force it cast iron is brittle ( by the way you can arc weld cast iron, using $2 shop welding rods with surprisingly little skill, and with a angle grinder you can make it look reasonable)

I suppose It would not be to difficult to use a coarse file to enlarge the holes

I filled my pipe with concrete to try to take the judder out when trying to mill with it using an X-Y vice. (does't work just to much flex)

I found the drill much more useful with the extra depth. But then for about $250 you can buy a much more capable drill.

G'day Jmk89,

Depending on the weight of your d/press in relation to the extra height you want to get out of it and what it's made of, have you thought of a solid steel column?

Might sound overkill, my d/press (passed on down to me by my Dad) is a Klass and came with a solid steel column. But then I'm most often go for overkill than using e.g 2 nails when 3 do it much better (as my FIL does )

I found most of the flex is in the table. If you are bending the post when drilling then your drills must be pretty blunt. So a solid post would certainly be an overkill, unless you happened to find one the right size.