Harbor Freight Drill Press quick hack

[Weekend Warrior Welding]

My Harbor Freight drill press has been giving me problems (no surprise there). It would stop drilling through just about everything and when I tried to adjust the tension on the motor/belt/pulleys, it didn't help. I figured out a little trick that takes just a few seconds to do. I'm sure it's not OSHA approved or anything like that, but it will definitely help you while you work on a more permanent fix. If you have some ideas on how to permanently fix it, please leave a comment on the video. Also, if you like the video, please subscribe to my channel for more like this one. Thanks!

[TrickieDickie]

Its a friction issue. Either the belts are too narrow or the pulley v-groves are too wide. The belts are probably bottoming out on the pulley base. Made in china anything is possible. I see fraying on the belts.

[piper184]

All you need to do to fix this is tighten the belt between the motor and the intermediate pulley. The machine is designed to do this.
See the little two winged thumb screw just ahead of the motor? That tightens down onto a round shaft that slides through the piece that the thumb screw goes through.
To adjust the belt tension, loosen the thumb screw, slide the motor back and re-tighten the thumb screw. Walla! fixed.
Now, that being said, these designs leave a little to be desired.
First it is pretty hard to get the thumb screw tight enough to keep the motor slide from slipping.
Second, it is difficult to move the motor enough by hand to get the belt tight.
Third it is even harder to hold the motor in place while you tighten down the thumb screw.

My solution is to use a pry bar of some kind to give a leverage advantage to moving and holding the motor. You can use pliers on the thumb screw or replace it with a hex head bolt so you can get more torque on it to keep it from slipping.

You should be loosening this thumb screw each time you change speeds. It makes moving the belts much easier once the tension is off of them.

Your procedure will definitely wear the belt out faster than normal

Something else to look out for: On my HF drill press the nut on the spindle pulley came loose and even though the belts were all tight the spindle was slipping. Tightened the nut and all is well.

[Nick79]

I believe the machine has a tension adjustment - usually on these it is the motor mount bolts.

[Weekend Warrior Welding]

I tried adjusting those little wing nuts and it had zero effect on the problem. I will buy new belts and hope that fixes the problem.

I don't remember where I heard this piece of advice, but I have been following it and it works well. Harbor Freight is great if you a building a home garage and you are a professional mechanic. I work in finance so this is definitely a hobby and I have saved $1,000s by buying cheap stuff from Harbor Freight. If the tool breaks, then apparently you are using it more than just a weekend hobby, so go buy a high quality tool (or make one yourself) to replace the broken HF p.o.s. You will build up your garage much faster and a fair amount of the tools that you originally bought will last for a long time since you aren't using them everyday. Especially someone like me, who decided ti build a dune buggy from scratch and it seems like every time i start a new part of the project, I need a couple new tools to get the job done.

[piper184]

From the owners manual:

[Skerry]

I think that due to wear on the pulleys and belts you have run out of adjustment. To rectify this fault pack out the motor mounting bolts with washers to tighten the belts. I worked for me.

[TrickieDickie]

Hmm, I took for granted the obvious tension adjustments were done. Speed adjustments are necessary for drill bit size.

[Skerry]

I have a similar drill press; you are correct the speed needs to be adjusted to suit every change in drill diameter. This entails slacking the belts, selecting the new appropriate pulleys then retensioning the belts as described in the manual. If sufficient tension can't be obtained, my suggestion is to: dismount the motor, insert washers between the motor and its mounting, refit the four bolts and the motor can now be repositioned further away to apply more tension.
If the drill press is run as described with the belt out of alignment, the wear on both the pulleys and the belt will increase resulting in slack belts again and slippage.
Sorry for not making this more clear in my last attempt.

[rebuilder1954]

One other option, if you are out of room for more adjustment, is to go one size smaller on one or both of the belts. From the video, the looseness seems far too great.

Good luck!

Bob R