How to grow a pillar drill

[demographic]

Yonks ago I worked for a local engineering firm and we had a steel tube about an 30mm in diameter and mebbe 500mm long, with two bolts sticking out at right angles. Sort of F shaped.
Anyway using that F analogy, the top horizontal of the F bolt had the bolt head ground so it could fit through the drill press table slots one way then the whole thing turned 90 degrees and it wouldnt come out.
Then the user could hold small flat objects on the drill table by levering down slightly and the lower horizontal part of that F would press the flat workpiece against the table.

It was way faster than using a drill vice and much safer than holding it with your hand, those sheets of metal can fast turn into a spinning finger chopper offer.

Its worth the effort to knock one up.

[cheb]

That's an ace idea. I'm still waiting on the taps and screws.

[cheb]

Back to this for a bit.

The stepped pulley's bore was too large for the spindle so I had to resize it. First fill in the hole:



That's what a spindle looks like when the pulley is taken off with a grinder, not by me:



Not much slack to be taken up, about 1mm wall thickness. It fits properly now and doesn't wobble:



The face plate has been tapped and screwed together, but I'm going to need a bigger lathe to face and edge it:

[cheb]

The table faced on a mate's bigger lathe. The difference in surface finish is likely due to the tip being damaged by the interrupted cut as it got to the screw heads. He doesn't have any HSS tools, only ones with carbide inserts, and my tools won't fit his lathe easily.



Centre hole drilled:



This is the lathe, a big old thing that cost £1.5K. It could be looked after better but that's not my choice.

[cheb]

I'm waiting on a clamping set to arrive. When it does that'll get the table slots done on the jig borer, it's first job.

[cheb]

The clamping set's arrived. Many, many months ago.



First hole, three more to go:



Quite drawn out, first a centre drill, then an 8mm drill, followed by a 13mm drill to make a suitable hole, and finally several passes with the 13mm milling cutter to make the slot. Reassuringly I made the drive belt slip, which is much better than snapping a cutter.

[ZRX61]

So who was the muppet who did the damage in the first place? What's the history?

[cheb]

Don't know, I bought the thing via Ebay.

As an aside it'll be up for sale in the spring, delivery possible.

[mangocrazy]

Here's one I restored earlier...

DSC_4336.JPG (795.96 KiB) Viewed 631 times

[cheb]

That drill bit looks a bit blunt.