You can find good information on the net about how to remove the quill, so I will focus on steps two and three.īefore moving on, as cast iron is prone to cracking, and you may wonder if there is a danger of cracking the housing when you apply pressure to the slit via the adjustment bolt. The key points here are cutting the slit and adding the adjustment bolt. Put it all back together and happily move on with your life!.Make two holes in the housing for an adjustment bolt to be added in order to be able to apply and keep a bit of pressure on the bore.The cut allows the bore to “close” around the quill under pressure, taking up the excess play. Cut a slit in the housing parallel to the axis of the quill.Remove the quill from the machine, along with other parts that may be in the way of the cut.You modify your press to add a quill play adjustment (if you have one already, and you did not know what it is for, skip to the end of this article for information about the adjustment procedure). Such a machine however is usually out of reach for the shallow pockets of most hobbyists. It will last a lifetime when properly cared for. If you have a professional drill press, you most likely will not be reading this anyway, as your quill will be precision-grounded, bearing a hard chrome finishing, and travelling in bronze bushes mounted in the cast iron bore. Actually, the fix I did on my “cheap” machine is a standard adjustment on many American and European quality drill presses, especially vintage machines! If you wonder why today so many presses do not have this adjustment anymore as a standard feature, other than for saving a few bucks in the production process, I do as well. In better drill presses, the steel quill travelling in the cast iron bore wears the bore out with time, and this is normal. These drill presses often come with a good amount of quill play straight out of the box, and for free. In cheaper drill presses, the bore is often not machined precisely enough. So why does quill play develop? In most presses, the quill is supported by and travels in a bore in the cast iron machine housing. On the other hand you may be one of the lucky ones, and have a nice quality vintage drill press, but one that has seen lots of use throughout the years, and developed some amount of quill play. Maybe made cheaply, for sure not sold cheaply, as it is a rebranded Taiwanese mid-size drill press that sells for about 600$! Not exactly a 99$ deal, and here I am telling the story. No criticism implied here, I did as well, and I would not exactly call mine cheap. Most likely, because you bought a cheap drill press machined to low standards, most likely from over the pond. Causes of axial play may include worn, improperly adjusted, or low quality spindle bearings, but that is another story and another fix (new spindle bearings installation is described here). Axial play manifests itself under drilling pressure and often causes vibration in the whole machine. Should you have substantially more play than this, I do not recommend trying to fix it by this method anyway.Ī different kind of quill play problem is axial play, which is unwanted movement of the quill in the vertical direction, i.e. My drill press had about 40 thousands play (1mm), and this definitively needed fixing. How much quill play is too much? Hard to say in general, as it depends among other factors on the precision of the machine construction – so maybe a better question is how much quill play can you afford, and if your holes turn up consistently in some unwanted place, then you know you have too much of the goody. I am sure I do not need to state this, but your machine is not turned on during this operation. Measure this in different places around the quill circumference, and that will give you an overall idea. If you have a dial indicator you can easily measure radial quill play by reading on the dial indicator how much the quill gives, or better moves radially, when you apply pressure with your thumb. Try this again with the quill fully extended to find out what the worst-case scenario may be. If you can feel the quill move in the housing, you have too much play in your quill. You can test your drill press for radial quill play by lowering the quill, say to half its maximum extension, fix it in place, and pushing with your thumb on the quill side. Radial quill play is unwanted lateral movement of the quill. With time, many drill presses develop radial quill play, which can be a major source of frustration when you waste hours of work and ruin an otherwise carefully crafted workpiece.
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