Past Projects
Drill Press converted to a Milling Machine
This
project was actually an
answer to a problem I was having with my metalworking hobby, NO MILL!
This started life as a $40 drillpress I picked up at the local farm and
home store. Not really sure what I was doing there since I don't own
either a farm or a home but nonetheless I was there and they had a
stack of these things out in the isle, so I bought one. After having it
about a year I came across an instructional video about milling on the
drillpress and proceeded to convert mine just like the one in Jose
Rodriguez's video. I really like his videos, they aren't professional
productions in fancy shops with machines costing tens of thousands of
dollars, he just a regular work-a-day Joe like the rest of use who
makes really cool things out of metal he gets at the scrap yard, like
the rest of us do. A few of the modifications that were made to the
machine were filling the column with concrete to make it more dense,
which reduces flex and vibrations. I also epoxied the head to the
column and the chuck to the spindle. The compound table was purchase
from Grizzly Industrial and there is a 1/2" plate of steel between the
base and the table to act as an adapter since the bolt pattern on the
table is wider than the base of the drillpress. I also removed the
spindle and chucked it in the lathe so I could drill a hole in the end
to accept a 1/4-20 threaded rod, this allowed me to make a micrometer
stop (the shiny thing on top the pulley), this let's me adjust the
depth of the spindle by 1/1000th of an inch per mark on the stop. I
also removed the return spring on the spindle and machined an locking
handle so I could lock the spindle at the depth I wanted. It works
really well but you have to take really light cuts. I have plans to
build a new milling machine from scratch sometime in the future.
This was a cheap $40 import drill press that I bought at the farm and home store. I ended up converting it to a light duty milling machine. In the future I'm planning on making a new spindle for this machine that will take up to 3/4" end mills using the weldon shanks.
It worked out really well but most of the time now if it's a small milling job I just do it on the lathe using the milling attachment I got from www.littlemachineshop.com