Drill Press - Floor Model vs Benchtop

Im thinking of buying a Drill Press and am wondering if I need to go the extra bucks and shop space to purchase a floor model or whether a nice

12" benchtop would be sufficient. Aside from the obvious fitting something 4 feet tall on the floor model, what can you do with one of these that you can't with a bench top model?

TIA.

Mike W.

Reply to
Mike W.
Loading thread data ...

Depends on your use - - - and how much money and space you have. I've used the 12" benchtop for about five years now.. I've yet to find a need for more size of power. Your needs may be much different. Mine is no longer on the top of a bench though, but rather a cabinet on wheels that also holds my pancake compressor.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

This question comes up a lot and to me, the answer is clear. Floor model. Most of the benchtop drill presses you see these days are small. Not just in height but in capacity. Used to be, benchtop drill presses were the same as the floor models except with a shorter column. In most installations I have seen, benchtops don't save any space over a floormount. Reason being that you have to get them up to reasonable working height. Many (most?) people end up building a cabinet for them to sit on. This usually ends up with a larger footprint than the floor models. The often stated justification for the cabinet with benchtop drillpress on top is that the cabinet affords storage of bits, ect. A better solution, in my opinion, is to have a floormount drill and build a cabinet that rests on wheels that just straddles the base and at a height that would allow the table to be lowered to a height that will accommodate the majority of work. This way, you have storage, have not really taken up any more room than a benchtop would and, if you did need the full capacity of the drillpress, you could roll the cabinet out of the way, do the job and roll it back.

"Mike W." wrote in message news:vU1sf.74733$ snipped-for-privacy@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com...

Reply to
CW

I'll go a step further: shops where I've seen a benchtop model have lost benchtop space.

Sure, you're SUPPOSED to be able to put them away when they're off-line. But most guys just leave them set up and work around them.

I got a floor model.

Bill

Reply to
bill.mcnutt

I bought a 3/4 HP Jet bench top drill press twenty years ago. It spent a year on a bench, the last 19 years on a stand I built for it! The problem for me was the bench got in the way for some operations. A floor model will give you a bit more room to work. Plus I rather give up a bit of floor space than bench space. You are giving up the room for it either way. Greg

Reply to
Greg O

I have a benchtop model. I think that the arguments for benchtop vs floor are a bit misleading. The fact that most benchtops are lower-end machines and you simply have to move to the floor models to get some advanced features.

There is one really good reason for getting a benchtop.... It's what you can afford. I have a 14" Delta benchtop which has met 98% of my needs for the last decade. A modest drill press is way better than no drill press and is good enough for most applications. I would like a floor model, and I will probably get one some day, but it's really just a "want" and not a "need" at all. The features that I would look for in an upgrade would be:

  1. Longer stroke (4"+)
  2. Less runout (overall quality upgrade)
  3. Larger capacity (column to quill)

in that order.

I have wanted to drill vertically maybe once or twice. It's just not that big of a deal for me. If the high-end features were commonly available in a benchtop, I would consider another one.

-Steve

Reply to
Stephen M

I too have a very old benchtop drill press (AMT) but for the last 15 years or so it's sat on a custom cabinet I built for it which houses -- among other things -- all of the accessories I'd need to store somewhere else if I had a floor model. It doesn't take extra space, it actually saves space.

Norm

Reply to
Norm Dresner

Reply to
Wilson

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 02:44:43 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, "Mike W." quickly quoth:

You can do all sorts of things with the longer model, like drilling into the ends of table/chair legs and lamp posts. They're also heavier duty (for the most part.) I regret the purchase of the little $40 8" HF "drill press-like thing" a few years ago. I'll replace it with a 16" floor model some day soon. They tend to be stronger, have longer quill travel and better chucks, etc.

Everyone I've talked to (who isn't a tiny model maker) regrets their choice of benchtop model over floor model, and most have replaced the short stuff.

----------------------------------------------------------------

  • Blessed are those who can * Humorous T-shirts Online
  • laugh at themselves, for they * Comprehensive Website Dev.
  • shall never cease to be amused *
    formatting link
Reply to
Larry Jaques

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 19:41:27 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, "Wilson" quickly quoth:

Working with machine tools is inherently dangerous, Wilson. Sell or give away your entire shop now, while you still can!

----------------------------------------------------------------

  • Blessed are those who can * Humorous T-shirts Online
  • laugh at themselves, for they * Comprehensive Website Dev.
  • shall never cease to be amused *
    formatting link
Reply to
Larry Jaques

I don't have anything bolted down in my shop. With the hydronic heat tubes in the floor, I haven't been enthusiastic about trying. I suppose I could borrow the thermal imaging camera from the fire department and find the heat tubes but...c'mon, a drill press tip over, with that huge base? I'm not seeing it, unless I'd do something astonishingly unwise like clamp something large, heavy, and way off-center without support or something.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

That does seem to be the case now. Used to be, if you bought a bench drillpress, the only difference between that an a floor mode was the length of the column. No, they are fully scaled down.

Reply to
CW

*If* the benchtop meets your needs, then you don't have to stop with a bit storage cabinet. My Delta Shopmaster shares space on top of a 25x20 cabinet with a Jet Mortiser. The top flips over to bring up a Ryobi 12" thickness planer. The cabinet is high enough to allow storage at the bottom, under all the equipment regardless of what is on top. It's on wheels and is much more stable than an unattached floormount drill press. 25x20 floorspace for three useful tools. You have to plan all the clearances so you can actually use the tools, but it can be done. I use a 2-car garage for 2 cars and woodworking, so I really need to minimize footprints and have everything on wheels.

-- chuck

===== Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. ===== {remove curly brackets for email}

Reply to
Chuck

Besides, if you really wanted to bolt it down, you could make up your own little peice of floor.

I work with gym equipment. A lot of it is unweildy due to its design. So we just bolt on a peice of plywood to the bottom of the unit. I have done this lots of time.

I can not remember doing it to a drill press though. Although it would be quite simple to do so if necessary.

Reply to
Lee Michaels

I can do that by swinging the drill press head around and clamping the workpiece to the side of the cabinet the drill press sits on.

I bought mine about 15 years ago - it is a heavy one, albeit a Taiwan clone. I'd call it a floor model with a short pillar :-).

Well, I make tiny models (RR), but I also make furniture. I can't remember an occasion when I wished I'd bought a floor model. I do wish mine had a longer stroke, but it's as long as most of the good quality floor models out there.

All that said, if we're talking about one of the lightweight cheap bench drill presses (that may be all you can buy nowadays), I'd definitely go with a floor model instead.

Reply to
Larry Blanchard

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.