Adaptation of a cheap drill press for through body holes!

[scorpionscar]

This weekend I've been working on an idea to improve a cheap drill press in order to get the distance between the center of the chuck and the column. Habitually this distance is about 110 mm, is not enough for drilling string body through holes or the holes for the studs of Floyd Rose or Tune O'matic. I'm going to use an old drill press that had stored into my workshop. The task is to dismount the column and screw a platen of 50 mm x 10. Due to the reduced space betwenn the chassis of the drill press and the engine, It was necessary to countersink the drills of the platen, I made screw threads on the holes in the chassis of the drill press.

The best of all, I spent less than 20 €. Some photos:

 

The new distance now is 156 mm, more than we really need.

Now it's time for preparing the base for the drill. It consists in a platen with three holes for attaching the base at the workbench, another vertical platen 50mm X 10 and a cartouche in order to reinforce all the structure. I drilled both platens each 30 mm in case it's necessary to move up.

I painted all satine black and mounted all toguether.

For the three lever I used M8 threaded rod in which I filed a recess for tighten with the wrench. for the extremes I made three pieces in the lathe out of beech wood. Then I painted red for a more realistic achievement.

And now the finish product:

It works perfectly and is no need to purchase a bigger/more expensive one in order to what I mentioned above. I hope you find this topic useful. Happy start of week.

 

Scorpionscar

 

 

[ScottR]

Well done!

I love creative work-arounds like this one.

SR