Convert a Drill Press into a Milling Machine

hello internet this is a drill press that i converted to a mill i did this a couple of years ago and it's got plenty of use most recently i used it on the lathe motor project to cut the aluminum housing for the belt i can't take off a lot with this if the cutter binds in any way shape or form it bends the spindle and then i have to pull it apart and go straighten it on my press so i've learned to take really light passes so recently i bent it enough that i i don't think i'm going to be able to straighten it it's got about three millimeters of wobble side to side and so i need something to replace this is a walker turner 900 series drill press this one is a 944 i got it as you see it on ebay for 130 dollars plus shipping what i want to do is clean this up convert it to a mill and replace my old drill press so if you're interested in that stay tuned we'll get started so i really like this sort of rusty green patina it has i'm not going to paint it or do anything with the main casting but i do want to clean up this heavy rust on the handles and on the hardware so i think i'm just going to remove those take them out to the wire brush on my bench grinder and clean them up make them look kind of like this column [Music] [Music] that drill press did not come with a column or a base so i found this mount it's from a delta i think or a delta rockwell maybe drill press it's the right size diameter and it's got a notch on the backside of it which is really nice i think this is designed for mounting those drill presses to a metal table and i'm going to use it for something similar i'm going to install it backwards though so i think i'm going to set it up against the edge of this metal plate i'm going to drill some holes in it and tap those and i'm going to mount this to this metal plate with some socket cap screws one thing i know about myself i cannot drill a straight hole by hand with a drill so i'm going to use the magnetic drill press to drill these holes i want this to be centered on the steel plate so i've drawn a line at the center line there and then it's pretty easy line up the flat with the back and i've got a center cut in here for to allow for it to squeeze together when these bolts are clamped so i'm just going to put it there drop a nut down in these so i've got a good center and punch all four holes with what was once a broken nail set when it's got good surface contact the electromagnet on this thing is just unbelievably strong so that's awesome because it holds a thing stable so i am tapping a 3 8 16 hole with a 5 16 inch bit and i've got an er 20 collet in here that works really well for holiday drill bits [Music] i've got the column mounted and bolted into the clamp below i'm really happy with how that has all come together so i had originally intended to move the head up and down and use the column lock but the more i look at this and just the space i've got here the more i think it would be better to move the work up and down and then use a combination of moving the spindle and moving the work to get things where i need them to be to move this up and down i'm thinking i'm going to use a linear screw actuator or a screw jack so this is that duff norton screw jack i've got it setting in this column because it's long so it has i think this is a three-quarter inch lead screw and it measures 18 inches long so it gives me 18 inches of travel and this thing's rated for two ton so it's it's vastly overkill for what i'm doing with it i'm going to mount this i think under the table centered and make a plate that'll set and push up on the bottom of that drill table i want to mount that screw actuator on the base here so i need to cut a hole in the base where that column can fit provide the clearance so that i can mount the actuator flat on the base i want to mount it directly below the center of the table and the reason for that is as it moves up and down i want it to lift on the center and mass of the table so that it's not binding or causing any sort of uneven wear on the column as it moves up and down so the way i'm going to determine where that center is i'm going to use the laser culminator for my telescope if you like telescopes and you haven't seen it i have like one video on the topic so i'll put a card up to it above and you you can check it out but don't do it now i want you to i want you to keep watching this video so i'm going to center this on this hole and it will shoot a laser down on the base and i can use that then to determine where the center of the base is so i turn that on put it there that looks good to me so this dot represents the center of this table so this is where i want the center of that lead screw to be or more simply that's where i want to drill my hole so to cut that i'm going to use a two inch annular cutter in the mag drill [Music] [Music] so here's the screw gap i do not want to drop this thing on myself [Music] so that's going to sit there somewhere like that so i want to make sure i've got it centered i'm going to take some measurements with the calipers and scribe around it so i know where it goes and then i'll punch these four holes and we'll drill them and tap them just like we did the column [Music] this is where the slots are on the drill press table i think i'm going to drill and tap four points on this slot that will let me slide it forward and back and a little bit this way to get it aligned the way i need to [Music] [Music] let's play [Music] let's put that work table back on all right there is a rectangular casting in the bottom of that table that measures five inches by three and a quarter and i want to put a piece of steel into that recess and then have the jack push on that so this is some 3 16 steel plate that's left over from my frame repair on the pickup but i think i can cut that rectangle out of this and then to actually attach it to the top of the jack i'm going to use some jam nuts so you guys are looking at the bottom of the drill press table looking upward this is that plate i just cut out the way this is going to work is that plate is just going to set up in that recess and then i'm going to take a nut and i'm going to weld it onto that plate that threads under the top of this and that will hold that plate in place and the nut will keep the shaft from rotating as it moves up and down so i need to mark where that is so i get it in the right spot and then i'm going to take this and we'll get it welded on now let's run it up to see how it looks and i don't want to physically bolt that plate to the table just because if i do something stupid when moving it down i want it to be able to separate so my plan to drive this i'm going to use a vfd i've got the step pulleys up here and i figure with the vfd that'll give me a usable range of somewhere around 40 rpm up to about 5 000 which would be a nice usable range i've been given this lots of thought and i'm thinking i'll put a via the vfd back here so i have the readout and i can see the rpm and i can also easily adjust the speed but those vfds they have massive capacitors in them and if you disconnect the electricity form i counted and mine will keep energized for 30 seconds after it's unplugged so for 30 seconds it's still got power and for 10 of those seconds it's still got enough power to turn the motor so i can't rely simply on an electrical disconnect for safety so i want the vfd but i also want to have a safety stop switch so this is the vfd i'm using i got this one on amazon it was right around 100 bucks i chose this one because it's got a large aluminum heatsink in the back i've got it wired up temporarily with some romex just so i can test everything out this is not the right way to do this there are house switches and everything else here but what i want to do is i want to make sure this thing works before i put it on the mill before i take the time to build all the the brackets and everything else so i've got that contactor switch that i showed you this is the 100 vfd and then this motor is a 230 three phase this one's a half horse 1725 it is not the motor that's going to go on the mill but it is of similar spec i've got the contactor wired into a 220 volt circuit in my shop from there the two hot leads are wired into the vfd and then the three leads run out from uvw into the motor this switch up here this light switch that looks completely out of place this is representative of the safety stop switch so this shorts two pins on the top header effectively it shorts one of the pins to ground so that's all set up let's fire it up let's see if it works so when i hit this button the contactor should connect and we should get power all right and we do safety switches off so what i'm displaying now is rpm [Music] [Music] all right let's check the emergency stop switch this seems to work really well i'm really happy with it so that's what i'm going to use i need to make i need to cut that box out that metal box so i can mount this in it and i need to make a mounting bracket to support the vfd on the machine and then we'll run the wires so let's go back over to the machine i think we'll start with the vfd we'll get it mounted i've got this plate it's 6 by 12 3 16 thick and i'm thinking maybe i can sandwich it between the motor and the mount and then use it to provide a surface to bolt that vfd to that would put the vfd right up kind of next to the motor in that area kind of where i want it and i think this is thick enough it would give it a pretty solid mount so i'm going to just scribe these slots here and then figure out where the motor needs to go on here and then i can drill four holes in this and i'll have the bracket for the vfd [Music] so i thought while i'm wiring this up i take a quick second to show you how to wire it this is a dual voltage motor 230 460. when you're you're working with one of these the low voltage is the 230 side so these two diagrams here show you how to wire it my motor has a nest of wires in there and if you look at this what this is really telling you is l1 l2 l3 those are the motor inputs that come from your vfd so if you have one of these chinese vfd's they're usually labeled uvw so l1 is u l2 is v and l3 is w so that's where you would connect those so when you wire this together you'd have one t1 and t7 bound together t2 and t8 and t3 and t9 and then t4 5 and 6 are tied together on their own so now it's time to actually wire this up i'm going to have the power from the wall come in through a knockout and then i'm gonna wire the emergency shutoff switch in the middle and then on this far side it will run out to the vfd so i'm gonna do that now let's get let's get this wired up and i'm going to turn it on and see that motor spin all right guys i got it wired up so i ran a 220 line and i dropped from the ceiling that runs into the control box here in this we've got the contactor and the emergency stop switch and then that powers the vfd which powers the motor so i've got the vfd up it's wired i put the belt on i got the spindle back in so i'm going to turn it on i want to show it to you guys i want to show you how it works and then there's only a couple more things we have to do and then we'll be able to actually mill something with this so power on set the speed we'll slow it down to nothing for the first run here and i'll just pick a number all right so i'm going to go right in the middle of the rpm range so this is 771 rpm and it's in its second slowest gear or pulley set up top with the belt i can calculate that out and i may calculate it out and put it on the screen as to what this rpm is let's take it all the way up [Music] so that's at 17.28 it's really quiet i am getting some vibration off the motor i've got to figure that out i don't know it may or may not be a problem but this is really cool [Music] and the e-stop switch works it just cuts power to the motor so the vsd is still there to reset it pop it out hit the run button again and any time i hit it it'll cut power to the machine [Music] i can also run it reverse i don't imagine i would ever use this feature on this machine anyway but it'll do it [Music] there's a little bit better look at the vfd so the dial sets the speed but we also have other things we can see so that's the rpm that's what amperage it's currently pulling is 0.8 amps 0.9 amps really the vfd itself has 17 minutes on it i don't know why that's not particularly useful but and then the frequency is currently held at 36.5 if i were to hit the stop button this will go to an f to indicate that that's the set point or the target [Music] so there's really two things left i have to do one this collet right now is only being held in place by the taper it's pretty easy to get off there with a mallet and a punch i need to secure it physically to the spindle so what i want to do is modify this collet to include a snap ring and then make a new lock ring so that i can draw it up and lock it into place with this threaded lock ring that'll keep it from coming off i won't have to worry about it so that's one we have to build the collet and the other is the hand wheel for moving the table up and down we'll have to build that so i'll walk you through how i'm going to do that so let's start i think probably with the hand wheel i think that's going to be the easier the two so i'll show you what i'm going to use for that so here's what i'm using for a hand wheel so i got it i bored it out to a half inch and i tapped it so that it would thread onto a half inch bolt and then i'm going to use a half inch nut to lock it in place so this will be the hand wheel assembly and then i'm going to cut off or turn off the head cut a keyway and i'm going to mount it to the shaft here with a shaft coupler so we'll end up with something like this and then because this does stick out so far when i you know when i rotate it it's going to get a load about it like this and so to support that i have this piece of metal that came off of the surface grinder this one had a rod go through it and i i thought maybe it was for holding like instructions or prints but i don't know i'm not putting it back there but it's just about perfect for this so the way i think that'll work is i've got the bolt here that'll become part of the the screw shaft and that'll fit in the opening in this steel block and then the handle will go on and this will act as a support piece i'm going to have to modify it a little bit so it's not quite tall enough so i'm going to have to add some spacers and then i also want to bore out this hole for the shaft and i'm going to press in a bushing this is the chuck that originally came on this machine it's a jacob 6a chuck it's simply held in place with the taper a lot of drill presses in this era have these threaded collars that you could use to help remove the chuck so when you unscrew that collar what you're left with is a spindle with the jacobs taper 33 on the bottom and then this threaded portion that this collar went on to so this threaded portion is 1 1 16 inch 20 threads per inch took me a while to figure that out as part of the mill conversion i want to use an er 20 collet so i got this on amazon i've seen them on ebay as well it's an er20 collet with the jacobs taper 33 or a jt33 taper so this you know simply fits onto the taper just like your drill chuck the only problem is is there's no way to secure it so you know get a little bit of side loading on this thing and it can come off on you but that's where this threaded collar comes in i want to be able to use something like this to hold this er 20 collet in place when i put this threaded collar back on and i fit the collet we've got about maybe a quarter inch of a gap there so this works great if you need to remove this collet once it's tapped in place it'll pull it off but what i want to do or what i'm thinking is get up there if i make a new nut one that comes down quite a ways onto this collet like i don't know maybe about an inch or an inch and a quarter that fits over this would thread on and then i'd cut a groove in here to fit a snap ring i could have this collet held into a new nut with a snap ring that would allow it to turn so i could draw it up and also push it off and most importantly it would keep this from coming loose if it gets side loading or other loading on it so i mentioned earlier that the threads on this collet are one and a sixteenth inch in diameter twenty threads per inch for not a lot of money you can actually get a tap in that size i got this one on ebay it was under forty dollars i was going to cut threads on a lathe on my mini lathe doing this but it moved so quickly with the change gears to get 20 threads per inch i did a couple practice runs it didn't go well this is inch and a half outer diameter with quarter wall dom tubing so that gives it an inner diameter of just a lick under an inch so let's switch over to the lathe we're going to go back to the lathe i want to cut a length of this down to that inch and a half we'll turn the inside diameter down to 1.02 inches and then we'll run a tap through it and then we'll finish by cutting snap rings snap ring grooves and we'll put a snap ring in here see if this thing goes together and works like i think it will in my head i'm working on the collet retainer or the collar for the er 20 collet and i don't have a way to cut wrench flats on it i tore apart my little mill and it's what i would use so i'm going to do something really stupid or it's probably really stupid i've cleaned up the taper and i tapped this in place and i'm going to try milling the flats on it with the new big mill without any sort of retention mechanism now this could go south in a hurry we're cutting steel with a high speed cutter this is a quarter inch i'm going to take some really light passes until i kind of figure out how this thing performs and just to be careful and this is going to be the very first time this mill has ever cut anything that's how that came out those are the lands for the wrench that'll give me something to hold on to or the flats i think that's okay especially for the really the first thing this machine has ever made let's see how that looks oh yeah that looks really nice i plan to cut a snap ring groove on this side and that would engage a snap ring on the collet chuck that would pull it upward this thing is hardened and i had a hell of a time cutting into it so so plan b i'm going to put set screws in and i cut a line to show me right where the set screws go this one here is the first one i made and it turned out really miserable it's off center tolerances are really bad it was the one i figured out what i was doing on and so on it i tapped and installed set screws and that worked really well so i'm going to do the same thing on this one so i've marked the location for the set screws i'm going to hold them in the vise here and we're going to use the mill to drill them the new mill to drill them [Music] all right now let's see if it spins true looks all right to me what do you guys think can you see it oh yeah you can see it you're looking right at it all right well let's mill something let's see if it works all right so this is a part of the tool post for the atlas lathe i need to machine this into a t-slot that fits in its tool post i started on it on the old mill press the little one but it just really wasn't up to the task and so i figure we might as well see if we can finish it on this machine so i'm gonna turn this thing on and what my goal is is just to remove material down to this first line and then once i get to the first line we'll flip it over do the same thing on the other side and then i'll start milling the t i'm going to run over and just clean up the mess that was left by the other press so so [Music] all right guys so here's how that part turned out everything was going really well and then it wasn't i was having good cuts good smooth finish and then i started getting chatter and it got really bad and it broke the end mill so i put another one in and it broke that within a few minutes i got really frustrated with it i put a third one in and i just rammed it into the part so i had to stop take a step back this is where the part ended up it's pretty much ruined uh the chatter just it took too much out of this face so i threw it away but then i dug it back out of the trash to show you all so i walked away from the machine for a little bit and when i came back i started looking at it and i pulled the spindle out and it's got absolutely no play in any direction except it's developed play in the up and down i don't know if you guys can hear that there's about 25 thousandths worth of play up and down and what i think is happening is that cutter is just hopping on the part and that's creating the chatter once it starts you know then it just goes so i think the solution here is to replace those bearings i'm going to pull the shaft apart see what's in here i don't know what these bearings look like i did not pull them out so they're the 80 year old original bearings so let's see what's in there but i'm gonna save that for another video i will admit i gotta walk away from this thing for a while so despite how this this turned out i had a lot of fun making it it's a really good tool um i think you know i've just got a couple of teething issues here to resolve so if you've got a drill press and you want a milling machine for just light duty around the shop this is actually not a bad way to go you know people tell you you shouldn't do it probably for reasons like this but you know we don't all have the space for a bridgeport or the money or the electricity or the know-how and you know sometimes you just need to mill a little bit off of a piece of aluminum or whatever this is really good for that don't let my results you know hold you back so i appreciate you all taking the time to watch this if you found it useful or you enjoyed watching it would you consider subscribing to my channel those subscriptions really help and i have a small channel i'm trying to grow it i like doing this stuff and i want to do more of it uh seeing new subscribers and and that interaction i really enjoy it so you know if you enjoyed it would you consider subscribing so keep an eye out i'm gonna release a follow-up video where i replace these bearings and hopefully resolve that chatter so with that i'm gonna wrap this one up thank you for watching

Channel: Robert Adair

Views: 346,457

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Id: UgQqwE8UIYY

Length: 33min 45sec (2025 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 27 2021