Mini drill press - any experiences?

I havn't, but I could believe that it would be better than a Dremel in a separate attachment. Looks to be good value. If the drill axis isn't exactly vertical you could presumably make a compensating plate to sit on the base plate.

Give us a photo, maybe someone can see how to fix it

NT

I bought an ancient drill press for PCB work. Built like a tank and absolutely zero slop. So fine with tungsten drills. Cost 50 quid on Ebay.

Thanks. Had not thought about correcting out the angle that way.. In use the piece of glass being drilled sits in a shallow tray of water (to cool & lubricate the drill bit) - so any amount of 'slope' on that tray starts to make things complicated..

At least with the cheap&cheerful eBay drill press then it's all assembled as 'one piece' - rather than having bits bolted on...

The drill itself on the Dremel mounts fairly securely on a plastic bracket, but the bracket itself can flex, adding further to the 'wander'..

There's an exploded diagram in the downloadable manual - page 10

The parts 39 and 7 are locked together by the two knobs 26 and 21 to set the drill at vertical / 45 degrees or horizontal. It seems that the (moulded-in?) idents which set this are out of alignment - so it is not possible to set the Rack (#8) to be exactly in-line with the Extension Tube Assembly (35)

I've not had this assembly apart as the screws '1' are anti-tamper, and I've not searched for the appropriate driver yet.

There are 6 small set-screws for tuning out the slop in the rack - but they don't help as the rack itself isn't true to the main Tube (35)

It's a shame it doesn't work - as it's 'nearly right' - but when you're using 1mm dia. diamond drill bits it doesn't take much misalignment to snap them. Thanks Adrian

Yes - that'd be the ideal thing...

Being over here in the Emerald Isle, shipping costs can be an issue - especially with heavy kit.

I may just buy one of these eBay specials and see if it does the job. I've emailed Dremel Customer Support - but other than them admitting "Yes - it's crap" I'm not sure what they can do. Great idea - failed in the execution...

Thanks Adrian

I can't really see what needs to be seen from the exploded diagram. But it strikes me that at several places there may be, depending on how fixings ar e done, opportunity to tweak the angle things are assembled at. I'm guessin g flexing of the drill holding ring might be stopped by supporting the top end of the drill too.

Your description doesn't really tell enough about the misalignment to sugge st where to begin. If you ended up with a tray of water at 5 deg, not too h ard to glue new feet to the whole thing. But there just isn't enough info h ere to go any further.

NT

Yes - the Dremel has a handy wire hanging loop, which is tie-wrapped to the top of the rack on my setup, to try and reduce the 'mounting flex'. This helps a bit.

Not sure what more I could add in explanation. When the rotating section is set to the 'vertical' position, the rack that the drill slides up & down on isn't at 90-degrees to the base of the drill press.

Just as a'what if' - I've remounted the drill with a small packing piece under one side of the mount - so the drill itself is now square to the base of the drill-press. I'll give it a try this afternoon, and see if this works any better..

Thanks Adrian

I'd say to engineer any pillar drill with zero slop in the movement isn't going to be easy. And with tiny tungsten drills it really does have to be 'zero'.

I think they (Dremel) have fallen into the trap of making something that 'looks like' a pillar drill. There's certainly something odd about the two plastic bits that set the drill to 90 / 45 / 0 degrees from the vertical.

Out of idle interest (prompted by the fact that I needed to get some more jewellery pieces drilled asap!) I tried shimming the left-hand-side of the drill mounting with some deeply-scientific cardboard. The Dremel drill itself is now vertical - (or at 90-degrees to the base of the drill-stand) - and it seems to wander less while drilling. I've also tie-wrapped the blunt end of the Dremel to the top of the rack, which reduces the wobble significantly.

Still thinking about the dedicated mini-drill-press.... but this'll do short-term. Shouldn't be necessary to re-engineer the darn thing if they'd done the job right in the first place . Perhaps, once I've sold some of the things that I'm making, I'll reinvest some of the meagre profit!

Thanks Adrian

There should be plenty available in Ireland providing you know where to look. You might try looking out for localish auctions of engineering shops, garages etc closing down, or modernising etc.

I stand to be corrected but in general, the heavier a tool is, in terms of a cast iron base and general construction maybe, the more likely it is to remain accurate once set up properly. Basically just because you need to drill small holes doesn't mean that you can necessarily do this with the necessary degree of precision and accuracy with a scaled down version of the "real thing"; as the rigidity simply won't be there. Using conventional mass production manufacturing techniques at least. Which isn't to say that such tools couldn't be individually hand-made at considerable cost.

But as I said, I stand to be corrected.

michael adams

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