slower drill press

[AAvK]

Anyone know how to slow down a drill press without adding a jack shaft?

Alex

[Greg G.]

What kind of drill press? Does it already have a pulley arrangement to change speeds? A smaller motor pulley, and/or a bigger quill pulley. And there is also replacing the motor with a slower model. You generally only have two choices, 1725 and 3450 RPM.

What WON'T work - a light dimmer.

FWIW,

Greg G.

[AAvK]

Yeah the dining room light dimmer, let's rip it out and put it on the motor! WEEEEEE!!! Sounds like it could be advice from Mad magazine.

It is a cheapy Chinese mini DP, $40 at the Homier traveling tool show. Something like

4 1/2" center-to-column and with a 4 speed set of pulleys on top. Very standard and low- end, can't lock the quill in place. The motor is 1700 rpm (not 1725). Works well but the lowest speed has this tacky chafing sound first time I ran it, so, must be some runout.

I imagine one could place a larger single gulley wheel on the front spindle, or something like that...? I know a variable speed DC motor and control board would be really expensive, after all the searching I've done.

Alex

[Norman D. Crow]

spindle, or something

really expensive,

Almost anything you try to do to this animal is going to cost almost as much as you paid for the whole thing to begin with. IMHO, you'd be better off to "cut your losses" and maybe look here:

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Pretty soon you'll be up to the cost of a good drill press. Donate it to some charity run thrift shop and get a decent 12" model. This one sounds like just more heartache in the future.

[J. Clarke]

Larger pulley on the front, smaller on the motor. If you want to have fun you could play with a couple of variable-pitch pulleys, but then you would have to set up some means of monitoring the RPM.

Best bet if you're in the US would be to get thee to Lowes before all the closeout Deltas are gone.

[George]

Speed comes from the number of windings and the clock at the electric company, regardless of the nameplate.

Dumb question, but are the pulley cones installed properly? Other than that, check to see if you can get a cone with larger diameters for the front.

[Andy Dingley]

Broadly so, but the difference between 1700 and 1725 is down to motor design. A motor that runs at significantly less than this theoretical limit is likely to be less efficient, run hotter, fail sooner, and be cheaper to buy.

(The term your search should be looking for is "slip")

[George]

Nifty, but not germane. Inductive slip, belt slip, loading - as stated, a guess for the nameplate, not the RPM, since none are constant.

[bridger]

take away it's car keys?

[AAvK]

"I know", but I am poorer than that, sorry to say, health conditions. The one I want is a larger benchtop type, 12 speeds and 14" swing if that is 7" center to column. As Norman suggested, the Grizz G7943 is the idea, and other generic Asian ones are the same. The Grizz gets down to 140rpm, pretty cool!

Alex

[AAvK]

yeah but ain't no Loew's near me. there is an HF about 40 miles south. Still can't afford it. Alex

[Larry Jaques]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 06:50:28 -0400, "Norman D. Crow" calmly ranted: