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Well there goes my wishful thinking...

DPittman

DPittman

Ultra Member
of being able to use a small milling (6×26, mini knee) machine as a drill press replacement... ya I could drill with it but thats only 3.25" between the bit and the table with a 1/2" bit in the chuck.
I have a decent drill press but I was hoping to sell it to make room for the mill and help finance it. Oops.
 

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The specs say you should have almost 15 inches of vertical travel. Have you measured the travel cause it seems like there should more room than you're getting.
 
I have a drill press right next to my 6x26, use it a lot but love the mill for precision drilling

Riser project would help......


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Yup, mill headroom is precious space. I always mention that when people are considering purchase because its an optical illusion just looking at the table with no vise or tooling in the quill. Same issue when you put a rotary table on. 3-6" just went bye-bye without a part mounted. My baby Bridgeport mill didn't actually net me any more headroom over my old RF-45. The only solution is riser block but that is mill specific.

Another reason I oscillated back & forth between a Kurt vise & ultimately what I ended up buying at the time, a 5" low profile mill vise. Happen to be Bison closeout model but there are Asian models. That difference netted 2" of extra vertical room. Some vises (maybe like yours?) you can safely remove the angular swivel base unless you use it regularly. You can buy stubby drills too to shorten their length. But ya, for drilling (and even power tapping) its hard to beat a drill press on a long column unless you require the precision/setup on a mill.
 
Alternatively get larger mill - I never had issues with my 40 taper BP clone - I think it is like 20 inches. I do precision drilling on it but for "rough" drilling nothing beats a drill press. Also in more of a production setup people would not want to tie up expensive mill with a duty a drill press can do.

I also almost never use a chuck - but collets for drilling. You can, if careful, drill stuff bolted directly to the table.

If you are a bit of a masochist you can also drill on horizontal mill. It just a pain not having a clear view of what you are drilling & setup is harder in almost all cases.

I did had to design around single left - right traverse of a table - both my mills are at around 30 inches max - so you can have even home shop stuff that exceeds rather large mills abilities.
 
I don't have a drill press either. I chuck drills into my ER32 collet. I've never had a problem and it's a far sight more accurate than a drill press.
I may add a drill press simply for the convenience.
 
Last edited:
YotaBota said:
How goes the battle? Is the Z moving within specs?
Click to expand...
Well the machine is moving as it was designed but the specs are a bit generous....the actual max spindle nose to table is about 12.5". Like it was mentioned a vise and chuck gobble up precious room very fast.
 
When I was looking for a mill I thought the Z-axis dimensions given by mfgs were definitely generous, especially when I had people actually measure what space remained after a vise and tool holder were included.
Stub drills are your friend!
 
DP- Apologies if I sounded like I was doubting you in any way, it wasn't intended that way. The clearance measurement just sounds so much bigger than it actually is. I went out and measured my vice, chucks and bits and was surprised at how quickly the inches disappear.
I was planning on selling may drill press as well but I'm glad I didn't. As others have mentioned it still gets used a lot for the woodwork and the non-precision jobs.
 
YotaBota said:
DP- Apologies if I sounded like I was doubting you in any way, it wasn't intended that way. The clearance measurement just sounds so much bigger than it actually is. I went out and measured my vice, chucks and bits and was surprised at how quickly the inches disappear.
I was planning on selling may drill press as well but I'm glad I didn't. As others have mentioned it still gets used a lot for the woodwork and the non-precision jobs.
Click to expand...
No apologies needed. Yes I've also come to the realization that I need to keep my drill press.
 
How are you guys coming up with 7? I've got 2 hand drills (corded and battery), a drill press, a lathe and a mill.
So 5 total.
 
Garage mill, basement mill, drill press, corded drill, big corded drill, battery drill, hammer drill ++..

Craig, you need more tools.
 
Doesn't mean the guy with the most drill sets and drill chucks will win. See ya all sometime later in machinist heaven.....!!

NO I'm not planning on going anywhere just yet. LOL Bill
 
I agree with @Johnwa , Craig you need more tools. Even I can list 4 cordless drills, one small corded drill, angle drill, hammer drill, drill press, mill, lathe and a small hand crank drill And you can make holes with torches and plasma cutter etc - LOL
 
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