(Drill) Pressing Matters

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Hello again,

It's been a while since I last posted some thing and you may be forgiven wondering what I have been doing. Well I have acquired a piller drill:

The Beast, Less Blurry IRL

The keen eyed will have noticed:

• It's a bit rusty
• It has what looks to be a big yellow warning sign hanging of the back of it
• There are bare wires hanging out the side of it!

The story behind this particular drill is that it suffered a switch failure and the company who owned it decided that it just wasn't worth fixing.  It then came to private hands who had meant to fix it but had been stopped by circumstances. Since then It has been in an damp workshop waiting for its time to come.

1st job a quick bit of sanding to remove the surface rust and a coat of light oil. The surface came up pretty nice with very little effort and the coat of oil and a new warmer home should help prevent rust reforming

Next a new plate and replacement of the switch. I decided to go with a high current toggle switch on the drill and an emergency stop switch on the table. Reasoning behind this is that altho strictly speaking you should clamp everything that is being drilled in a drill presses down, no one ever does. So I wanted an E.M. stop I could work without needing my hands, as one may be holding the work and one operating the feed.

I didn't feel that a no volt cutout switch (after a power cut they need to be cycled to before working again I.E. if the power goes out the drill wont restart when the power comes back on line.) Would be necessary as this is only going to light duty domestic use, chances of me using it during a power cut AND forgetting to turn it off are pretty slim.

Hole Enlargement... 

As my step drills were not available (due to me being a fool of the highest caliber) the Job of reaming out the hole in the new aluminium switch plate fell to a large screwdriver, this was surprisingly effective if hard slow work.

The finished article

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, It's obviously not standard yet still looks smart enough, the screw next to the the switch acts as an earth connection to the plate.

Next thing I needed was table I had a load of 1" chipboard left over from my

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Kitchen table kludge and that very weekend I killed my faux workmate by shearing one of its handles of while tightening it (whoops).  So I used the frame of that, having stripped out the handels and leadscrews,  with the chip board and some 2x2.

The Finished Drill

As you can see the drill itself sits on an extra pice of chipboard and the chipboard top rides on some 2x2" this is more about raising the drill up than adding strength (tho it does that too) between the drills chipboard foot and the table is a thin pice of rubber this (along with all the dense yet soft wood) is there to help damp out the vibration form the drill. While it does produce a low rumble in the floor its very quiet and as I only use it at sensible times of day it's really not a problem at all. The whole lot is held together with coach bolts.

All in all it works very well (altho it has got rather buried, been having a bit of a sort out). The hip level EM stop works well when you have both hands full.  All in all well worth the repair.

This was the only half post I had and is probably a bit of a cop-out but i have spent some time taking photos for a blog post when i'm away next weekend. heres to the posts continuing.