Drill press alignment and source for 5/16" link belts?

[W Chan]

Hi,

I just finally got around to putting together a bench top drill press I picked up from Grizzly months ago. Everything seemed ok until I turned it on. There's quite a bit of vibration (enough that a piece of wood on the drill press table moves around by itself).

I went ahead and checked the spindle alignment and noticed that while it's dead-on aligned to the table side-to-side, there's a slight pitch towards rear. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

I also noticed that while the drill is running, the v-belt seemed to wobble (and thus the cause of the vibration I noticed). My guess is that the v-belt had been sitting in the same position for a long while and memorized that shape. I was going to replace it with a link belt, but the belt on this look much narrower than the 1/2" belts I use on my tablesaw and bandsaw. The outside width of the existing belts measure to be 5/16". Do link belts this narrow exist? If so, anyone have a source where I can buy some?

Thanks! Winthrop

[Terry Ilardi]

I have a Craftsman Bench top drill press that had amazingly low runout out of the box but a pretty junky v belt like yours and it causes vibation like yours. I've been looking for a narrow link belt for years and haven't been able to find one.

Terry Ilardi

W Chan wrote:

[W Chan]

Follow up:

I was able to fix the spindle alignment. Ended up there was little play in where the motor/spindle mount onto the main column. I shimmed it and re-tightened the bolts and now there's no more run-out!

As for the vibration, I discovered that the motor and the spindle pulleys aren't lined up! The spindle pulley is almost 1/2" lower than the motor pulley. I'm looking around for a 3 jaw puller so I can adjust the pulley heights to match up. Also noticed the spindle pulley has a slight wobble (placed my level on it and rotated it around). Hopefully after I address these two issues most of the vibration problems with disappear.

-Winthrop