The Drill Press Whirlygig

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Greg_Lewis
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The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by Greg_Lewis »

The drill press whirligig.

Wikipedia defines a whirligig as an object that whirls or spins or has at least one part that does so. Some folks make comic ones to park on their front lawns, wherein a wind-driven propeller powers an animated figure that moves about.

Well, on the thread about how to drill and ream a large hole with a drill press, [http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/vie ... 8&t=107086] I said I’d tell you the story of my drill press whirligig.

My adventures in machining began many years ago when I got a taste of it at a hobby shop where I worked as a kid, and in the Navy when I worked in a camera repair shop. Lathes always fascinated me but I never could afford one. At the hobby shop I lusted for the Unimat we had for sale but at my minimum wage of $1 per hour the price was out of reach. The shop did have a small Dunlap lathe in the back that I used on occasion to make replacement parts for model railroad engines customers would bring in. When I worked in the camera repair shop we had a substantial 12-inch lathe but we never used it for our work as we had an ample parts supply for the aerial cameras we worked on. I would sometimes play with it on duty nights but there wasn’t much I could do with it since I had no clue as to what I was doing and we didn’t have any raw material to work with.

Years passed and, although my income rose, so did my expenses, with house and car payments and kids’ mouths to fill. But I discovered a series of books by Dave Gingery titled: Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap. One of the books in the series was how to make your own lathe. In all of his writings, Dave was enthusiastic about how you could build the lathe, a shaper, a mill, a drill press, and more, for free if you were good at scrounging. And even if you had to buy a few items, it was possible to complete the set for $50 each or less. The first project is the lathe because, he wrote, it’s the core tool of all machining and once you have one of those, you can make everything else. And the lathe project was designed so the lathe could even build itself.

Ah, this was just my ticket. I bought the book and read it through several times and ogled the photos of the terrific-looking machine Dave had produced. But, as it turns out, in order to make the lathe you needed to make a melting furnace and cobble up some foundry sand by mixing playground sand with clay. So I bought the foundry book from the series and read it through. But one ingredient I didn’t have a source for was the refractory clay needed for the furnace.

Well the university where I was teaching had an industrial technology department that included a foundry and machine shop, so I wandered over to the foundry to ask the instructor where in town I could find some refractory clay. He asked me what I was up to and when I told him he said there was no need for me to make the furnace as I was welcome to use his shop as long as I didn’t get in the way of the students. Whoa. A deal I could not refuse.

And then he introduced me to the machine shop instructor who made the same offer. The machine shop had perhaps 15 to 20 12-inch lathes, a CNC mill, a big lathe with perhaps a 30-inch swing, and an assortment of horizontal and vertical mills of substantial proportions. Included was a metal stock room from which I was welcome to take bits and pieces as long as I didn’t abuse the privilege.

So I made the patterns and rammed up the molds and set them in the pouring area for the twice-weekly pour that was run by the sand crab’s advanced students. It took some months to get all this done as I could only work there during their lab times which were at the same times I often had my own duties to attend to.

Eventually I ended up with a pile of castings which I trundled over to the machine shop and began cutting into finished lathe parts. Now at this point I should tell you that I wasn’t a raw beginner, having been a tool user since the age of three when I got ahold of a screw driver and removed all the knobs and escutcheon plates from the doors of our house while my parents were attending to my kid sister. By the fourth grade I had moved on to making various contraptions which were used to test the effects of gravity when tossed out the attic window on the down-hill side of the house, which was four stories above the ground. And in my early teens a friend and I cobbled two bikes together to make a tandem bike, and made a go-cart out of water pipe and an old lawn mower engine. Later there was the Model A Ford that went through several engine rebuilds and numerous roadside repairs during a cross-country trip from LA to New York and back. That we didn’t kill ourselves with some of those adventures remains a mystery.

The reason I tell you all of this is that by the time I was machining parts in the university shop, I had at least some sense of how to do things, which makes the drill press whirligig incident even more significant.

The Gingery projects are heavy on castings, and a clever builder can easily recognize where fabricated parts would be easier to create if the raw materials are available. And since I had access to the metal stock room in the machine shop, I took advantage of that. Instead of casting the lathe bed base, the shop teacher almost insisted I used a big fat bar of CRS from his supply. Great. Less work, too.

So at one point I needed a pair of blocks that were about a half inch thick and perhaps 1 3/4 inches square. Each of these two blocks needed to have a hole drilled in its center 7/8 inch in diameter. These holes were to receive pressed-in bronze bearings for the lead screw. I picked out a bit of CRS from the stock room, lopped off two bits in the bandsaw and squared them up in a mill.

Well the university machine shop had a pair of very nice American-made drill presses with Morse taper sockets in the spindles. Speeds were controlled by knobs on the head and, as I recall, you could dial them down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 rpm. Included with the drill presses were very heavy vises about the size of a six-inch Kurt Anglock.

I picked out one of the drill presses, set the first block up in the vise, and grabbed a 7/8 taper shank drill from the tool crib. Lining things up on the scribe marks took some time due to the heavy vise and overall bulk of the machine, but I got it to where I thought it was right.

Now the parts were small and the vise was big and heavy, heavy enough that it was not going to move under the down-pressure of the drill, and bolting it down would have been troublesome as I would have had to re-set the drill press table so it’s slots would align with the bolt ears on the vise. I saw no need, therefore, to fuss with this detail and I set the two wrenches which were there for this purpose next to the vise. The press table was round so I pivoted it a little to finish off the alignment.

I turned on the press and pulled on the quill feed handle. Those of you who have struggled with light-duty or import machines have missed the joy of using something that is accurate, well made and powerful. The smoothness of that quill feed is something I’ve yet to see elsewhere.

The drill was sharp and the two chips, one from each flute, curled off with just a hint of blue and in a beautiful swirl suitable for framing.

At this point in my story, you’ve already figured out what’s going to happen. Just as the 7/8-inch drill broke through the back side of the 1 3/4-inch square piece of CRS, the bit snagged.

The vise, being unbolted, whipped around tossing the two wrenches and the removable vise handle to the floor. The sounds of that echoed through the shop as the students and their lathes made relatively quiet and steady noises. I reflexively let off the down-feed and the Morse taper drill, being well seated in the drill press spindle, held, lifting the vise off the table.

Lawn whirlygigs offer no competition to the scene now available to everyone in the shop. To see a 30-pound drill press vise spinning around at 200 r.p.m. is an interesting sight. Even more interesting were the 40 eyeballs of all 20 of the students who, due to the unusual noise, were now looking in my direction.

Lacking a mirror, I do not know the color of my face but I could feel the rush of blood into my embarrassed cheeks. I grabbed for the off switch and the entertainment ended after a perhaps three-second display — just long enough to provide a demonstration to the students on how not to use a drill press.

The instructor was in his office at the end of the shop and, mercifully, all he did was to glance up, perhaps to see if any blood was involved, and went back to his desk work. I retrieved the wrenches from the floor and bolted the vise to the drill press table.

I could see in my peripheral vision one of the advanced students standing at a nearby mill, looking at me with a frown. As I was reaching for the on switch, he stepped over and with an exasperated look, grabbed the lock handle on the drill press table pivot and slammed it tight. I don’t remember what he said but, although his comment wasn’t rude or vulgar, he made it clear that I needed to pay attention to my work. So an additional humiliation was added as this professor was corrected by a 20-year-old student.

Well, the lathe was eventually finished. Using Gingery’s techniques I made a precision straight edge and hand-scraped the ways flat and true. A motor was procured from a scrapped washing machine, and the lathe worked as advertised. I was pleased to be able to turn a 10-inch shaft and hold the diameter to less than ± .001 along its length. And the foundry and machine shop professors were able to brag to incoming students that someone had made a lathe in their shops.

I still have the lathe but it has its limits and I eventually procured a more versatile machine, along with the rest of the gear a home shop might require. And my lesson is learned. I now lock every adjustment on every machine even on parts of said machine that may not be in use during a particular operation. It’s become a habit, reinforced by memories of the drill press whirligig.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
John Hasler
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by John Hasler »

Seems like everyone has to do that once. Best to get it over with using a lightweight drill press and a piece of wood, though (but a 2' 2x4 can still make a nice purple spot on your ribs).
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by Greg_Lewis »

John Hasler wrote: Sun Aug 26, 2018 9:13 am ... (but a 2' 2x4 can still make a nice purple spot on your ribs).
And do we know whose ribs those were? :lol:
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
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Bill Shields
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by Bill Shields »

anybody argue that the drill press is the most dangerous machine in a shop?

not necessarily for what it is...but for how it is (mis)used...
Too many things going on to bother listing them.
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Harold_V
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by Harold_V »

I'd have to agree on the misuse. As a youngster, my father had a small Duro drill press (sold be Sears), and a random selection of drill bits.

One fine day I decided I'd see how lead drilled. I had a five pound ingot (those amongst you who remember when plumbers made leaded (caulked) joints know what they look like).

Using a fairly large drill (about 7/16") I picked a random spot on the ingot, and started drilling.

Things went reasonably well for a few seconds, then the drill seized in the hole. Needless to say, the ingot was being hand held. It started spinning, shaking the drill press to the point of almost tipping over, at which time the drill broke, sending the broken drill and ingot off to the side, missing me by a generous margin.

My father was not thrilled.

H
Wise people talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something.
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tornitore45
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by tornitore45 »

Great story, somewhat early it was clear where it was headed because anyone that has ever used a DP has similar experiences but most often without an audience.
Mauro Gaetano
in Austin TX
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by Greg_Lewis »

tornitore45 wrote: Sun Aug 26, 2018 5:14 pm Great story, somewhat early it was clear where it was headed because anyone that has ever used a DP has similar experiences but most often without an audience.
Having an audience was the worst part. At least I was alone in my own shop when I left the box wrench on the mill spindle drawbar. I'll refrain from telling that story, but I will tell you that the top end of the drawbar is 6' 2" from the floor, and I am 6' 4" tall.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
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tornitore45
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by tornitore45 »

Having an audience witnessing an a screw up moment can be embarrassing or life saving.
I climbed on my work bench to prepare the wall for the installation of a mini-split air conditioner in my garage.
I place a piece of 2x4 18" long in the wise thinking I can use to step on. Something more urgent that I do not recall got my attention before tightening the wise well. Next thing I find myself on my back, on top of my compressor with a good gash in my hand.
I was alone in the house, luckily it was not life threatening and was spared the wife preaching and disapproval sure to follow.
I love the cool garage now.
Mauro Gaetano
in Austin TX
SteveM
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by SteveM »

My dad was using a VERY long and thin drill bit in the drill press (something on the order of 8-10" long).

As he drilled, the bit bent slightly and then centrifugal force took over.

The end of the bit came out of the hole and whipped around.

Dad looked down and noticed that his shirt had been sliced, but luckily not his skin.

Steve
BClemens
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by BClemens »

I have often thought that of all the machines we use in our shops, the drill press can get you in trouble probably easier than most all others because it is considered quite simple to use - but so easy to misuse. You have both hands occupied - one on the quill handle and the other on either the job or vice. So when you get in a 'jam' and the job is whirling around, you are stuck with making a decision - with the spindle in motion - you can't let go. Now - to the point: I believe and have stressed in every shop I have anything to do with that a drill press MUST have a foot switch. A 'dead man' switch should be basic standard equipment on all drill presses. You have the ability with a foot switch to quickly reduce the trauma and very possibly prevent an injury. (off the peach crate)
BC
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NP317
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by NP317 »

First thing I did when I purchased my new drill press in about 1975 was to make and install a foot switch!
I made two foot switches and also installed one on the drill press in my Father's wood shop.
Truly a potential life-saving improvement.
~RN
John Hasler
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Re: The Drill Press Whirlygig

Post by John Hasler »

BClemens writes:
So when you get in a 'jam' and the job is whirling around...

...you failed to secure it.
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