Drill press mod

[immortalx]

I have a big floor drill press in my shop but I don't have one in my "hobby workshop". So there was a bench drill press on offer at lidl and thought I should get one and make some improvements. This is the original model :


The biggest problem with those bench models is the shallow throat. I build guitars as a hobby and i needed a big throat to be able to drill bridge post holes in body blanks. I used scrap pieces of square tubing for the construction. I drilled 4 holes at the back of the drill head and fixed it on the vertical tubing. I made the holes oversized on purpose, so that I could fine tune the alignment of the head in relation to the table. I moved the motor further back and got a matching belt to get it running. The table is just another piece of square tubing with an old cabinet door bolted on top. Finally, I made a bracket with welded steel plates so that the table can travel up and down. I used the original threaded handle to tighten the bracket on the vertical column.

Here's a photo with the original base in front for comparison :