Recommendations for floor type drill press

[Springhill-RR]

I am needing to upgrade to a floor type drill press.

[Glenn Brooks]

I love my old 1939 Delta DP-120 drill press. These are antique units but parts are plentiful and you can change out quills and bearings with modern precision replacements.

However beware of all old drill presses, as the quills and bearings wear out with long use and they develop up to .10” runout at the shank. Good news is new chucks, quills and bearings can often return them to factory new condition.

[Steggy]

If you can find a used Arboga unit, they are the Cadillac of the drill press world, in my opinion. Only thing is most are three-phase, but that’s not a big deal these days, since reasonably-priced phase converters are now available.

The Arboga I have was made in 1955 and is built like a tank. I replaced the spindle bearings when I got it—they had a lot of “miles” on them, and installed a new chuck. More recently, I made a new quill counterweight for it, as the old one fractured. Drill press runs great and has plenty of muscle and beef to work accurately.

[Dick_Morris]

I have the one in this thread and it has given me many years of good service. The only maintenance I've had to do is change the light bulb. However, I'm looking at adding a counterweight for the table. Like me, it's grown considerably heavier during the last 49 years.

http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/vie ... rill+press

[8thscale]

... upgrade ...

I thought I'd add a few comments ... I have two! First I would recommend 3-pulley as most versatile.

Delta similar to that shown. Note the table is square, typically intended for wood working. It was purchased new (60+ yrs ago) by my father and I still have it. I don't use it regularly but it is great for clamping the workpiece to the SIDE of the table and then pivot the table. Think about a long non-cylindrical piece.

Second one is H*** F*** acquired used in '96. I got it as I was setting up my garage. My father found a Jacobs chuck and I have used it as my primary ever since ... no issues.
Dave

[8thscale]

Glen, Do you have a way to raise and lower the table on your Delta?

Thanks

[Mountaineer]

If you have the room, a 2’ arm Arboga radial drill is very nice. Common to find used in Canada.

[Glenn Brooks]

Glen, Do you have a way to raise and lower the table on your Delta?

Thanks

Yes, the old Delta’s and other round post models all have a thumb screw assembly holding the table in place. Also a pin thingy drilled at 90* to insure right angle drilling.

[8thscale]

Glenn, Yes as you stated there is a way to hold the table but when raising or lowering I'm usually looking for a 3rd hand!

This is where a true metalworking drill press comes in handy with the handle. Sometimes needed when center drilling and then step drilling to larger sizes.
Dave

[gwrdriver]

My drill presses are 1970s-era Rockwell model #15-xxx (the xxx number varies by individual model.) These machines superceded the Delta DP-120s, shown in Glenn's photo above, and were dual use - a high-end DP for home shops, and a general shop DP for industrial shops. My first DP, and my first machine tool, was a Rockwell 15-017 1/2hp bench model, bought new in about 1970. This has needed nothing in all that time and I only recently replaced the belt, but not because it needed to be replaced.

A few years ago I found a floor model 15-xxx abandoned in an auto garage shed, slathered from head to foot in layers of multi-color paint, but it was complete so I paid the owner his $100 bill. Under the paint (lower photo) everything was rebuildable and some careful sand-blasting and a year or part-time restoration work resulted in a like-new floor model Rockwell (top photo) worth several times what I'd put into it. Carefully used, both of these machines will outlive their next two owners.

So it goes without saying I would highly recommend a US-made Rockwell 15-xxx made between the late 1960s and late 1980s as a lifetime home shop machine. The most frequent problem you'll encounter in machine of this age is a circle of drill spots in the table, which in worst-case can be almost continuous, but that doesn't mean an otherwise good DP can't be made usable.

BTW, the hand wheel spider is home-built.

[Bill Shields]

amen on GWR's recommendation. I also have one from the 1980s, but was never been in storage - in continuous use since my acquisition in 1983.

came with similar 'dings' in table (but not as many).

understand the spider wheel...the one thing I tolerate is the 'sliding' handle on the quill...

[gwrdriver]

I lived with that sliding bar on my original Rockwell for 40 years and accepted it as "it is what it is" and didn't let it bother me. When finishing off the old/new DP, as long as I was at it, I decided to make a spider for both. In some ways it was an operational improvement, but in some ways it wasn't, at least for the extra work involved.

If nothing else it certainly added to the machines' appearance of mechanical sophistication.

FYI to others, . . . the spider was an aftermarket accessory for Rockwell DPs of all periods. It consisted of a bored and tapped cast iron hub, threaded steel bars, and phenolic plastic knobs. For my spiders I located one orphaned OEM hub casting, and made the one in the photo from steel bar. The bars and knobs are straight copies of the originals. Adding the spider doesn't destroy the ability to go back to the single sliding bar, if'n you want to.

In general new parts have become very scarce, and two in particular, a proprietary non-standard bearing in the headstock, and the quill return spring. The good news is the most important bearings, for the quill, are standard precision off-the-shelf bearings.