From Drill to Mill

[jimspac]

As a Sr Mfg Engineer I can tell you it is considered a cardinal sin to hold an endmill in a drill chuck even for boring purposes because the chucks are not designed to support the radial forces that are only handled properly by collets and solid holders. You get a small X & Y milling attachment that can be mounted to the drill press table. You would be restricted to very light cuts with the drill chuck.

I used to have my own part time machine shop with 2 Bridgeports, a Boyar Schultze 612 surface grinder, and a Monarch engine lathe. I worked at it for 8 years and made enough money to buy a Bridgeport Series 2 NC. I was chided by friends and customer initially until they saw the work I could do with it.

Now with all that gone I yearn to have a clunky old Bridgeport to handle my projects. If you can afford $1200 or up you can run a 3 phase 2 hp on a static phase converter (motor starter then runs on single phase at 2/3 power output) I had to build a rotary phase converter to run my NC on that cost me $75 for an old Baldor 7.5 hp motor. You just need a big enough motor to cover the largest motor and start this motor with a static phase converter. This will supply true 3 phase power to anything on that circuit.