Using a drill press for other operations.

[Modeler12]

I am curious how some of you may have adapted other 'tools' to your drill press.

Here are a couple that I have made and used several times in the past. I posted this before, but perhaps it is worth repeating.

 

Mounting a Dremmel type of high speed tool to the quill. I used a 3/4 inch piece of plywood and mounted that to the quill as shown below. The Dremmel (actually an old Monkey Ward unit) tool fits snugly in a large hole and that way I can drill tiny holes rapidly and more accurately than doing this by hand. This came in very handy when I had to drill numerous 'rivet holes' in the bulwarks of my Conny. See below.

 

I have also adapted a circular saw blade (made by Thurston http://www.thurstonmfg.com/) to my drillpress. This allows me to cut wooden strips to various thicknesses.

[shortgrass]

Some time ago, I purchased a Luthier's thickness sander and I have attached it to my drill press.  The sander has a micrometer on it so one can adjust thicknesses as required.  Currently it is sufficent for my purposes.  I will try and post a pic a bit later.

Dave

[mtaylor]

For small parts, you can chuck brass or wood into the drill press and use it as a lathe.

[Garward]

Boring machine as the vertical grinding.

[Modeler12]

Boring machine as the vertical grinding.

This is a great idea. I can see a thickness sander in the making. Although I have used a drum sander in my drill press, I have always held the part in my hand or at least loosely on the table. This fixture would allow me to do things more accurately.

[Modeler12]

Some time ago, I purchased a Luthier's thickness sander and I have attached it to my drill press.  The sander has a micrometer on it so one can adjust thicknesses as required.  Currently it is sufficent for my purposes.  I will try and post a pic a bit later.

Dave

Thanks Dave for this suggestion. I looked up the sander and thought that for the price I could do something like what Garward suggested. I assume you don't use something like this every day. But then again when I cut a lot of strips on my Shopsmith mini table saw, I will need to run a lot of them through a sander. I had thought of doing that on the same Shopsmith, but now I can see having the drill press all set up for the same production run.

[Modeler12]

Before someone asks me about my 'Shopsmith mini table saw' let me explain. The pictures below show my crude setup that really works quite well for small jobs. It uses a four inch diameter saw blade from Thurston. I need to make some refinements to control the width better and instead of the hard foam pad I need to have something better to hold the parts down. But all in due time.

[Snowmans]

I have used my drill press for a lot of the above ideas, mainly have a drum sander for the internal curves. I made a table that has a zero tolerance for the drum so I can get in nice and close with those small parts. There is a vacuum in progress since the photo, fits on under the table and removes most of the dust. wil have to get a pic of that once finished.

I have also tuned a couple of canon barrels with another jig I made to steady the chisel and file. This was just slapped together so wasnt too steady but as I only needed two I made do. I would improve the design if I made any more. I will see if I still have this jig and post a pic.

 

 

[Modeler12]

I did something similar, Snowmans.

Below are some pictures of my drillpress setup for drum sanding. The larger drum is from my Shopsmith and is 2 3/8 inch diameter. The smaller one is a Dremel drum at ½ inch.  I made the platform using two pieces of 2x2 and some ½ inch plywood. It is held to the drillpress table from underneath with two hex-head screw; so it can be removed quite quickly. You can see two holes which are in an arc (the post is the centerline). Thus I can simply rotate the table to change from one drum to the other (after replacing one for the other, of course). Later I may add another one to the right of the large opening.

 

One nice usage for this kind of setup is to touch up the edges of laser cut parts. I think we all know that the thicker bulkhead parts, for example, have a slight bevel to the edge. That is because the laser beam looses power as it goes through the material and the back side is sometimes barely cut. These drums can take care of cleaning this up very quickly and give me a square edge.

[shortgrass]

Hi Jay,

Sorry I couldn't get pictures up earlier.  Here are a couple of pics of the Luthier sander on my drill press.  Actually works quite well and am able to takle off as little or as much as I need.

Dave :)

[Modeler12]

Hi Jay,

Sorry I couldn't get pictures up earlier.  Here are a couple of pics of the Luthier sander on my drill press.  Actually works quite well and am able to takle off as little or as much as I need.

Dave :)P1000181.jpgP1000182.jpg

Thanks Dave for posting these pictures. I took a look at this unit and found the picture below.

I am curious what the three brass knobs to the right of the drum are for. I can see that the one on the far right is to hold the micro screw in position, but what about the two on top of the fence? Do they clamp the fence down to the table? And if so, there must be a slot in the table???

Now that I look a bit closer, it seems the one in front is stationary and the one in the back slides in a curved slot to make the thickness adjustments. Right?

I assume also that the drum runs pretty true without any wobble.

[Mahuna]

Jay - you're correct in what you said: "Now that I look a bit closer, it seems the one in front is stationary and the one in the back slides in a curved slot to make the thickness adjustments. Right?"

 

Another really nice feature is that the port for a dust collector works really well - I attached my Fein shop vac to it and there was almost no dust after I used it.  The only issue I had is that my old drill press didn't have a fine adjustment for table height, so changing drums was more of a job than it needed to be - this is more of a drill press problem than a Luthier's Friend problem.

 

Frank

[Modeler12]

That is what I like about this forum. It is full of great ideas and I decided to borrow a couple to make my own thickness sander. I want to thank both Garward and Dave Shortgrass for providing me with the ideas that I tried to incorporate in the one shown below.

I am very space limited (and who is not). So I had to make the table and fence at an angle to clear some cabinets that are to the right. I can open the door to the left if I have to. I did not think I would sand anything very tall or wide, hence the oak fence you see is low and can move to give me a maximum clearance of 1.5 inches. I can always move the pivot point of the fence (to the far right) if I have to go wider.

 

There are a couple features I should explain. The fence can be moved minutely by using the little block and screw to the far left. With the lever arm of the fence and using a 1/4-20 screw in the micro block (I'll just call it that) I can adjust the thickness by about .003 inches if I turn the screw 1/8 turn. The block has two redundant parts. The pin that rides in the narrow slot prevents the block from rotating and the small spring is supposed to keep the fence in contact with the block. In practice they are not necessary.

To keep the part to be sanded against the table and fence I used two 'feather boards'. The one to the right keeps the part down, but I don't like the way it is held on top of the fence and will have to modify that. I wanted to keep both 'springs' (thin pieces of mahogany) as close as possible near the drum sander. I decided to use a small ball bearing wheel as shown. It works very well. Before I start, the wheel is against the fence, but as soon as the part makes contact with the wheel, it moves out of the way and continues to apply side pressure.

One more comment about the bolts and thread. Both the micro block and fence have a T-bolt that rides in the wide slot and clamps from below. The threaded parts for the pivot points and the micro block use a steel nut that is epoxied in an oversize hole.

Thus far I have made a few trial runs and found that I can control the width of thin planks to within .003 inches over a 24 inch length. I have not measured thickness variations as yet.