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I have old big bench drill and some milling bits. How can I make sure that bit holder stays in place. It has morse cone 2 or 3, and drill chuck drops when adding sideways pressure. I would't like to make permanent modifications.
Edit, so it seem wise not to mill with it. But sometimes there is urgent need to make some tool/part.
Check this video, I think this is what you are asking. WARNING, he uses some "colorful" language sometimes, but he is hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY-wXcFhx5w
I ran a horizontal boring, drilling, and milling machine with a tapered chuck and had a 6 inch diam. spindle and ran 12 inch carbide and high speed steel. Never had a spindle come loose. Some times even inserted a second tapered spindle inside the large.
That being said. They are made to hold but the operator or machine maintenance is responsible to keep both the tapered holder and the spindle clean. Start by cleaning with steel wool and make sure there are no spots of rust or visible damage (flat spots or bumps)clean the inside of the spindle with the same vigor. When you are sure it is perfect, do it one more time. Make sure to wash the parts inside and out with a strong cleaner and wipe dry.
Now place the tapered chick in the spindle and press the spindle down against a hard wood block onto the drill press table. Do this several times. Once you are sure it is in there tight, do it a couple more times. Those taper chucks are precision ground to form a vacuum that is very strong. If your chuck comes loose after that you need a new chuck or time to consider a new drill press. A drill press can and should hold. Small light milling taking light cuts should be ok. All of this depends on a good bond on the spindle and a smooth feed of the material. Common sense should always be used. Also if the spindle or chuck wobbles or chatters. Stop and see what is causing it. Chatter can cause even a good spindle come loose.
I cancelled what I'd written after a think. The guy above has no clue what he is doing! Did anyone else see the tool flex with his 'jerk' table feed style? These sort of posts are dangerous! About the only useable information is pointing out that there are tanged and open shanks. The "chowdery deposits" on the shank tell the storey of a dirty quill, a absolute no-no.
About all I would attempt to mill with a drill is wood and maybe some plastics in an emergency and I will cop to having done so with anxious trepidation.
Tapers have to be clean and burr free to work. Thin card wrapped around a shank and worked gently around can clean the female. Burrs can be stoned off a male shank. Most inportant is that the tapers are the same! I have seen a Morse,(not Morris as above),taper used? in a Brown & Sharpe taper by brute force and ignorance.
Buy a Mill/Drill even a benchtop model can do a huge variety of work. Drills are for drilling at which they are wonderful. Attached is some of the most common tapers.
Attachment 18087
Wasn't refering to you Big Mike 71.
I was sure you was not. Thanks for that. My problem with most posts are that the details are so lacking that it leaves to much room for answers on both sides. The best part of my answer is "common sense". For information the machine I ran was a Giddings and Lewis horizontal boring, drilling and milling machine costing more than a million dollars, a lot more. It could machine far beyond belief but small parts as you might put on a bench drill press. All possible because of a huge range of speed and feed changes. I machined parts weighing hundreds of tons and believe me, A hot Saturday morning Government job on a flat piece of steel weighing 20 Lbs. because I had my machine ready for set up at the time, Some of the workers came by and took pictures as it was funny. Any way without knowing what "tool' or material, it is impossible to give the man any good advice. I do some light and I do mean light milling on my drill press but I think my experiences and common sense through the years give me a little edge up. I have done many things in machining that I would never suggest others do and yes I would do them any time. Lets just hope we gave the man some insight and hope he makes the right and safe decision.
Big Mike 71,
I hear you. I had initialy written to TexBuxer on what to check and look for then had second thoughts. Then I watched that U-Tube :(
TexBuxer I hope you read the replies as nobody would want an accident to befall you. I'm sure that copious doses of common sense will help.
Thanks for replys. I'm looking for cheap mill, I'm not going to waste more time for this.
1. http://framer99.blogspot.com/2012/11/diy-reverse-drawbar.html
2. https://www.scribd.com/doc/269706198/How-to-Mill-on-a-Drill-Press
3. http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/converting-drill-press-mill-drill-7870
and the best solution:
4. "it seem wise not to mill with it(...)I'm not going to waste more time for this"
Good job. Been there, experienced that. Ended up with an old cheap warhorse RF30 mill drill. Paid $400 with heavy duty table and while there are similar for many times that much(probably in way better shape) I believe it's possible for others with patience to find. Yeah, it's NOT the greatest but it's proven to be useful and has stood the test of time as there are still parts available through Grizzly.Quote:
Originally Posted by TexBuxer
I also want to commend the others in their measured responses. We DONT want to discourage folks, and on other sites you could have gotten quite the lambasting. This topic of trying to make a drill press into a mill comes up regularly and there are some instances where they have turned the drill press into a mill, but good grief, the amount of work expended and $$ put into it would seem to not be cost effective. But hey, we all have our obsessions and who am I to judge?
But when there is safety involved there is a line that has been crossed and some of us feel the need to speak up. It would seem TexBuxer came to the same conclusion on his own, so I'm not trying to belabor the point to him. My hope is that digital tide of lurkers get it too. Kids don't waste your time trying to do this at home :)
There have been times when I've chucked an end mill in a drill press and done some simple non critical slotting in light gauge mild steel, never been my first choice to do so but when you have your mill running a set up and just need a simple slot for a bracket. As long as like has been said a little common seance and a lot of patience it can be done, never with any tight tolerance expectations though. Plus I find it is always a good idea to have a sacrificial piece under the part you are trying to slot then just make shallow cuts back and forth until you have (I won't say milled) cut the slot through the part The end mill always has a surface under it.
Like has been said if the inside taper is not clean and free of as he called it chowder and the proper matching taper is not used expect disaster, or at the very least poorer performance.
That being said I used to have an old 12" column 5 ft arm fixed height radial arm drill with a raising table I never knew the make or brand of the old machine but it had a 5" diameter quill with a #5 morse and 6" of travel a 26 by 60 table which could be rotated out of the way. My wife drilled millions of holes with it and I very often used it as a vertical boring machine to line bore the bearing locations in aluminum Mack truck transmissions that I later made sleeves to to bring the bores back to factory specs, With the 5 ft long 2,5" boring bar and a bearing mounted on the side of the table and one mounted to the base with a counter weighted leaver to assist in holding the weight of the bar all of the bearing locations could be bored in just about half a day including the set up and location change time. The local Mack dealership would send me about 1 or 2 a week for about a year until corporate realized they had a problem with their transmissions and changed the design. Apparently the the fleet the dealership was servicing wasn't the only ones having that problem.
This is not the old drill press but it looked a lot like it
this is a Fosdick 11 almost identical except for the gear head
Attachment 19256
Hear, Hear and Amen.
