Does anyone know if it is possible to buy an x-y table type of thing to give an existing pillar drill milling capabilities?
A friend has a clarke CMD10 "Mill-Drill" and says he wouldn't go back to a normal pillar drill. He uses it for milling almost as much as drilling!
I just wondered if I could mod my old pillar drill to do something similar or whether i need to start my xmas list..
The big problem is that side load on the MT will cause it to rapidly come loose - this messes-up the work and may mess-up the operator. If the quill is hollow you can use a draw bar to stop this happening.
The best answer by far is to buy a mill drill. The difficulty with the cheap ones (round column) is maintaining registration if you need to move anything during a cut, if you're serious about milling you may want to look at a second-hand mill with a knee that moves on dovetails to maintains the registration.
Dave
Yes you can buy a milling table that you can bolt onto anything, I used to have one, but found it was useless without a milling machine, a standard pillar drill won't do anything useful, I am sorry to say. The milling table was about 25 quid (yes, it was cheap at the time) I expect you can still get them from the cheap tool places, but don't expect too much, anything more than light milling of wood is not really practical you will find, and may be quite dangerous.
mrcheerful
The Clarke one has a slotted pillar by all accounts.
Not too serious, just think it'd be useful from time to time.
sponix
============ Look at this:
Cic.
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