My fourth attempt to salvage this drill press has failed

I gave up on my fourth design to salvage a drill press.

It's one of the vintage "clamp a handheld drill in it" types. Looks like this:

Most of my attempts center around removing the vaguely drill shaped wire hold-down and putting bolts through those holes instead.

The problem is twofold:

1) The drill body shapes it was designed to interface with (the ring) no longer exist. Modern drills sit awkwardly in it. You can solve #1 with various methods of adding wood blocks or some kind of rubber (like Sugru) to make the ring shape better match your drill, but once you have solved that there is no way to avoid slop, jitter, and drift of the drill. Because the round body of the drill is not held firmly and you would need some very careful custom manufacturing to make a vice of sorts in exactly the shape of the drill to hold it steady.

2) Once you have firmly mounted the drill, how to you adjust that mounting to ensure the drill bit is straight up and down?

After my fourth attempt at designing a solution also met with failure, I broke down and bought a $40 drill jig.  I don't like that I did, but there is a limit to how many hours I can put into design and manufacturing when I'm ultimately saving $40. The fourth attempt failed when I realized the bolt holes in the ring came far too close to the inner edge of the block of wood I was going to mount the drill to, and would just tear out.  In short the drill was too wide.

There *is* an adaptor for dremels, which is straight forward, because dremels have a threaded outer casing that makes them easy to firmly and straightly attach them to something. (https://www.printables.com/model/509388-dremelvermont-american-drill-press-adaption-clamp ) So I'll probably 3d print this later and make it a dremel drill press, but if anyone has ideas on how to cheaply make this work for regular hand drills I'd like to hear it.

I suspect the answer lies in building a box that is firmly screwed onto the ring plate, putting the drill in place, and then filling the box with something gel or liquid to flow around the drill as a mold and create a custom shape that hugs the drill in place.  You'd have to do it without compromising the venting the drill needs to cool, but something like that...adjustment would still be a problem.

In other words, the core problem is not this drill press, but modern hand drills, which are round with next to no allowance for mounting. How do you create a firm mounting for a weirdly shaped curved object (a modern hand drill) without spending days making a careful 3d model or a plaster mold? One that preserves venting and access to the handle?

anyone have a better idea?

I wonder what drill it was made for? I have a press like that, but I also have old drills.
Wonder if you could find a drill that fits it on ebay or something?
Any idea what drill it was made for?

If I were trying to make a mount for it, I have different skills than you, I'd not be 3d printing things, but weaving wire into an open net basket the right shape. But that's how I roll.

Daniel Andy wrote:

There *is* an adaptor for dremels, which is straight forward, because dremels have a threaded outer casing that makes them easy to firmly and straightly attach them to something.

OK, so my thought is how do your get the outer casing of the drill 'threaded'?
Caution, potentially crazy ideas ahead - but they might result in you getting a good, not-crazy idea.
1. open up the drill case and see if there's any spot you could epoxy on some sort of a nut or bolt so that a hole made in the case will give you what the dremel has?
2. make some sort of metal band that can be fastened to the outside of the drill that has bolts or nuts securely fastened to it. Ideally these will have slots so that you can use them to adjust for vertical?
3. I suspect all the modern drills are mostly plastic, so suggesting you find someone to spot weld to it won't work. My dad had 2 genuine metal bodied drills, but we're looking at over 60 years ago and they finally died.

I do feel your pain. Hubby has a wonderful drill press and it's one of my favorite toys tools. There are things I can do with it that I simply could never do with a hand drill, as my hands are on the small size and don't fit around many tools safely.

how about a 3-d printed adapter to hold modern drill?

Jay Angler wrote:Daniel Andy wrote:

There *is* an adaptor for dremels, which is straight forward, because dremels have a threaded outer casing that makes them easy to firmly and straightly attach them to something.

OK, so my thought is how do your get the outer casing of the drill 'threaded'?
Caution, potentially crazy ideas ahead - but they might result in you getting a good, not-crazy idea.
1. open up the drill case and see if there's any spot you could epoxy on some sort of a nut or bolt so that a hole made in the case will give you what the dremel has?
2. make some sort of metal band that can be fastened to the outside of the drill that has bolts or nuts securely fastened to it. Ideally these will have slots so that you can use them to adjust for vertical?
3. I suspect all the modern drills are mostly plastic, so suggesting you find someone to spot weld to it won't work. My dad had 2 genuine metal bodied drills, but we're looking at over 60 years ago and they finally died.

I do feel your pain. Hubby has a wonderful drill press and it's one of my favorite toys tools. There are things I can do with it that I simply could never do with a hand drill, as my hands are on the small size and don't fit around many tools safely.

1) This is probably the best approach but I'm scared of the potential for electric shock and / or shattering the drill casing, or both.

2) I like the "giant pipe clamp" idea. I guess it would still have to have some threaded mounts put on that? I can't weld :/  Definitely on the more involved side of things but also has serious potential.

3) Melting some mountings into the plastic would probably work. I'd be afraid of going back to #1 and electrocuting myself with them...but it could work.

One of the approaches I considered was epoxying 4 dowels onto the drill in the four directions and then mounting onto the dowels with shims. I rejected that mostly because what if I do all this custom chassis work on the drill only to have the drill motor kick the bucket a week later?  Then I'm committed to doing all that work over!

Ideally it would be something that I could use with various drills, or re-do for a new drill, fairly easily.

I wonder if I could clamp it in a box between two sandbags...

Pearl Sutton wrote:I wonder what drill it was made for? I have a press like that, but I also have old drills.
Wonder if you could find a drill that fits it on ebay or something?
Any idea what drill it was made for?

If I were trying to make a mount for it, I have different skills than you, I'd not be 3d printing things, but weaving wire into an open net basket the right shape. But that's how I roll.

I have never seen a drill that looks like it was made for this. I bought a vintage 80s drill. It wasn't old enough.

Solving a hardware problem with metal weaving sounds wonderfully zen. I wish I had those skills!

Wouldnt the basket need to be attached to the drill somehow?

Daniel Andy wrote:

Pearl Sutton wrote:I wonder what drill it was made for? I have a press like that, but I also have old drills.
Wonder if you could find a drill that fits it on ebay or something?
Any idea what drill it was made for?

If I were trying to make a mount for it, I have different skills than you, I'd not be 3d printing things, but weaving wire into an open net basket the right shape. But that's how I roll.

I have never seen a drill that looks like it was made for this. I bought a vintage 80s drill. It wasn't old enough.

Solving a hardware problem with metal weaving sounds wonderfully zen. I wish I had those skills!

Wouldn't the basket need to be attached to the drill somehow?

I wish I had your 3D print tech and skills, we are even :D

I'd make the basket work with that wire thing, it's already structural. Make the drill slip in, sort of like a holster or sheath.