Drill Chucks

[Downwindtracker2]

Drill chucks wear and suffer abuse. In the maintenance shop I worked at, we used Rohm keyless chucks in our drill presses. They would jam and get tossed. They would show signs of guys using two 14" keys ( pipe wrenches) when they locked up . In my home shop I'm bit more civilized, I use strap wrenches when the Chinese Albrecht clones jam. They were amazingly inexpensive. And they are a wear items. While with a drill press or a mill for that matter, the run out is a product of the spindle, the arbor and the chuck. What kind of numbers you expect or hope for and what would be acceptable in you eyes?

[ctwo]

Maybe I'll measure mine, hopefully a thou or less

[pete]

I checked my Albrecht at quite a few diameters when it was brand new. Right around .001" on average. I think Albrecht guarantees .0015" or better. I've mentioned before about buying 3 integral shank Glacern keyless and what testing I did showed .001"-.0015" but a bit more towards the .0015" end on average and one was real close to my Albrecht. I'm assuming it was pure luck, but I bought a 16 spd floor model Craftsman drill press 10 or so years ago that had a Chinese made 5/8ths capacity keyed chuck. Every size I checked it with was a consistant .001" or a tiny bit better. It really was as good or a tiny bit better than my Albrecht was. So the spindle, taper, arbor and chuck combined must have been pretty good or any errors were canceling each other out. I should have kept that chuck when I sold it. Nothing really in print I've seen so far to prove it, but that abuse and over stressing a chuck in my opinion is what ruins a drill chucks long term accuracy so I'm pretty careful with mine. 3 jaw lathe chucks are not supposed to be overstressed either so I can't see how drill chucks are any different.

Any detailed information I've read about good keyless chucks says there not designed for nor is it a good idea to use reduced shank Silver & Deming drills in them. Keyed chucks are supposed to be used then. So to me that says over stressing any drill chuck is a real bad idea. With reduced shank drills or larger taps I use an ER collet and other than being way slower that works even better than any drill chuck. I've read at least one post on I think Practical Machinist where the poster mentioned the chuck internals on his keyless destroying themselves because of the self tightening feature they have when reduced shank larger diameter drills were used. I don't recall if he said just how large of a drill he was using though. My ultra crappy little 4 spd drill press for around the house type work has around .010" runout, way too much and not good enough for even semi precision woodworking imo. I might settle for .003" for a good metal working drill chuck but what I have I'm ok with. I'm pretty sure that years ago when Jacobs were still North American made they guaranteed .002" or better on there keyed chucks. This should be an interesting thread to see what the average is for most with a home shop. Obviously there's going to be large differences between brand new and well used.

[Downwindtracker2]

Thank You ,Pete. It's an excellent quantitated reply.

My Jet drill press has .010 with it's Chinese Albrecht clone, and .012 with a Glacern. It's safe to say the spindle has .010 of runout. Though most home drill presses heads are bored so loose that taking measurements is a waste of time, this one is OK. Now on to the mill.

At our maintenance shop I campaigned for Morse taper shanked drills, but another millwright spoke out against that. I think his drill press at home didn't take MT drills. I've also heard of Silver& Deming drills being called blacksmith. As luck would have it when the plant closed down I ended up with some reduced shank drills and no MT shanked drills . I wonder what I did with the drill press's original 5/8" keyed chuck?

[pete]

Hmmm that's quite a bit. The chucks themselves should be pretty good and I've been more than happy with my Glacerns verses what they cost. I'm sure with you about those generaly over bored head castings. My floor model dp was bored to a really nice sliding fit, but with the little one you can shake the quill around by hand, it's not even a good eyeball fit. There was a muti part artical in the English Model Engineer magazine about "rebuilding" one of the larger but still bench top consumer grade DP's quite a few years ago. The guy did a hell of a job to the point of even hand scraping the table dead flat when checked with a surface plate. He rebored the DP's head casting and then press fit a bronze sleeve in the head, then re-bored to properly fit the spindle and quite a bit more including new and better bearings. At the end of it all he seemed pretty happy with it's new rigidity and much better precision. But it was a whole lot of work and I'm not sure I'd be willing to go that far. I probably should do at least the same for the quill on my little one just to take the feeling of total disgust away any time I have to use it. Possibly then it might be worth adding a better chuck. It's maybe not the idea for everyone since what I work on might be a lot different than them. But after checking the amount of table flex with an indicator that my larger floor model dp had while drilling or the parts own weight when setting it on the table I've finally given up on even having a consumer grade dp for metal work. Seeing the table flex .050" or more was pretty standard. Weight and enough room is also a large problem in my shop. So once I got my BP clone and saw what that knee does for keeping the table square to the spindle the bigger dp got sold off. If a person does a lot of woodworking then one of the light weight dp's would probably earn it's keep. I'm enough of a wood butcher / heretic that I have zero issues about using my mill to do a bit of woodworking as well. Sam Maloof is probably spinning in his grave over that.

But I'd sure think you should get a whole lot better than what your seeing on your Jet. Exactly what procedure they use to bore and then grind the morse taper at the factorys is hard to say. The very cheapest one's may only be reamed, but I'd think Jet would do a lot better than that on the bigger one's. Drill press requirements for spindles and there morse taper trueness aren't exactly rocket surgery or at Deckel levels but you'd think any jigs or fixtures would be set up to get the taper pretty damn close every single time. Defects are possible even with the best of course. With 2 chucks showing about the same then I'd bet your thought about the spindle taper is correct. I did fix my bil's drill press that had a bit more runout than your seeing. After bluing up the chucks arbor it showed hardly any contact. Just a narrow ring at the bottom and part of one side at the top. I found a small burr almost at the top of the morse taper and after removing that with a MT reamer and getting a much better contact pattern we got it down to around .003"- .005" average but his chuck was a long ways from being decent quality. It did surprise me just how tiny that burr was since it was flattened out and how much effect it had. Got a MT reamer handy you could lightly hand spin in the taper to check yours or clean up anything that might be there?

LOL, yeah I've heard those S & D drills called blacksmiths drills as well. That sort of deflates one's ego about doing precision work. From what I saw in the mines and there truck shops where they were using MT shanked drills for the larger holes most of the mechanics and welders didn't seem to care much about even a fast wipe on the drills MT shank before slamming them home in the dp's spindle. So it may or may not have been a great idea where you were working. Those mining truck shops are lot different world than what were usually trying for though.

[Downwindtracker2]

I looked for some time for a used Delta, Buffalo, or a Canadian Blower drill press without any luck so I settled for this Jet 17. A new General 15 was at least three times as much. In my search I talked to a machinery dealer, he said they no longer sold even the deluxe imports as there was too much flex in the columns. I now believe him. The cast iron base is pretty flexible too,, but that's only annoying. I'm thinking of bondo ing it to a piece of plywood, it's that bad. When I buy a machine at a dime on the dollar, I don't mind having to fix, but when you buy new you don't expect this much work. It was one of the blue and black ones, a couple of hundred less then the white ones when they were switching over. I'll check the taper when we get back from Quartsite . My wife is a rock hound, there's over twenty miles of tables. Think of taking your wife to twenty miles of jewelry counters. At least, it shouldn't rain in Arizona, I hope . But I'm thinking with my luck,a new spindle. add swear word here.

I worked for a while for contractors. Plants and mills would need a millwright for vacation relief or shutdowns. So I got to use a lot of different drill presses, from the nice Swedish Arboga gearheads and the old main brands to a couple of big radial arms . One was German and the other Russian. Those were truly a millwrights' dream drill press.

[Steggy]

So I got to use a lot of different drill presses, from the nice Swedish Arboga gearheads and the old main brands to a couple of big radial arms . One was German and the other Russian. Those were truly a millwrights' dream drill press.

I have one of those nice Arboga drill presses with a two-speed, three-phase motor, made in the 1950s. I got it at a machinery auction in 1989. The lower spindle bearing needed replacement and I tossed the keyless chuck (I hate those things with a passion). Some 28 years in my possession and she still runs like new. I must say that shifting gears to change spindle speed beats messing with belts every time, and there's nothing to slip under (over)load.

1955 Arboga 8-Speed Geared Drill Press

[pete]

I've got some friends in the UK and there availability of choice European made machine tools at generaly pretty low prices makes me envious. Have never even seen one of those Arbogas up close, but there reputation is sure good. Getting to use one would spoil me for life. As lightly built as my larger Craftsman DP was on the arm support for the table, at that time they were still using heavy wall ground pipe for the main column, and the cast iron base wasn't too bad but still nothing like an industrial DP would have had. The newer ones today seem to have moved to little better than large thin wall exhaust pipe for the column. You can tell just by tapping it with a finger nail on the display models. If they start building them any cheaper were going to start seeing plastic pipe used for those columns.

We had a fairly large Russian made lathe in the machine shop up at Kemess mine. First Russian machine tool I've had a look at. Very heavily built and the machinist thought it was an ok machine. But it was far from being in new condition.

Arizona should be a bit nicer than the weather were getting so it should be a nice break. I'd be real interested in what you find once you get back and have a chance to check that spindle taper out. With a bit of luck it will be a simple easy fix.

[liveaboard]

Mine is ancient; got it for $75 at auction. column is 5" solid. I never checked the runout but that thing has been used a lot in it's long, long life.
It's VERY heavy.


I bought a new chuck for it when I got the thing in 2008;

It's a self tightening and cost as much as the drill press. I use Morse taper bits for larger sizes.
Sometimes a hole saw with over torque it so much I need to use a pipe wrench to get it loose, but mostly it works well.

[Downwindtracker2]

I had to look where Kemess mine was. I've never been into that part of province. I have been up the Halfway river. When I got a steady job in maintenance, my seniority was low so I couldn't get the third week of August off, the opening of moose season , instead I got the forth off. Not too far from where we camped, the week before, a hunter got tag teamed by a couple of boar grizzlies. He got one but his hunting partner had to shoot the second one off him. There was a sow on the clearcut. He lived, turns I knew him, a HD mechanic. I would not have hunted that valley, too much grizzly sign, moose aren't fond of grizzlies. That area of the mine looks much wilder.

[pete]

Yep we had lot's of Grizzly's, some moose, wolves, a lot of fox, weasels right in camp and even a few herds of Cariboo come through during migrations. By freight truck the mine was about 6 hrs travel time to the nearest paved highway but I've never traveled the road, we flew in and out with a 2 week on 2 off rotation. I also worked at the end of the Dean River channel for one season. Probably 5 or mores times the Grizzly population that Kemess had. I've seen as many as 45 in one day when the fish were running on the Kimsquit river. Lucky place and right time, but I got to help a couple of game wardens load a darted live two yr old griz into the back of there pickup and then into the choppers net so they could transplant one of the problem grizzly's who wouldn't stay out of the camp. Having a close up look at the teeth and claws on even a young grizzly was an eye opener. Had a full grown wolf that got a taste for cook shack food I used to feed him and he'd sleep almost under my hoe in the winter while I was loading trucks for the heat off the hydraulic cooling rad. Pretty wild area and it and the Kimsquit River are the most remote areas I've been into. I'd not hunt either area and for the same reason you mentioned. I like seeing the bears, I just don't want to get up close and personal with them. In those remote areas there not afraid of humans at all, but they mostly keep there distance from the running equipment. A bit spooky cleaning track frames or greasing a machine at the end of a shift though. Even worse after dark.

[MrWhoopee]

Mr. Whoopee here, first post. I'm a recovering job-shop owner. I was just GIVEN a Kent vertical mill (9x42 BP copy) and a South Bend Heavy 10L after 18 years with nothing more sophisticated than a hacksaw, drill motor and file.

In the shop where I apprenticed, and then in my own shop, we only bought Albrecht keyless chucks. It was absolutely forbidden to chuck anything larger than 1/2 in. cutter diameter in them. Chucking S&D drills in any chuck was also forbidden, they were strictly to be held in a collet to prevent damage to the shank. Drill presses have MT spindles for a reason.