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Posted by David Sherman on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 09:35:11 :
In Reply to: OT Drill press advice posted by Rick C on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 08:12:05 :
Unless it's a big heavy industrial unit, I'd go with bench top. The one I use the most is a simple 1950-vintage Sears benchtop unit. I used to use a Chinese (Jet) one all the time, but haven't set it up since I moved. My only problems with the craftsman are that its slowest speed isn't slow enough sometimes, and it only has a 1/2" chuck. I have a Chinese floor-mount drill press (a neighbor made me an offer I couldn't refuse on it still in the box) but the base is so small that unless I bolted it to the floor it's just too wobbly. I only use it when I need a slower speed or a bigger chuck. I've yet to need it due to the size of the workpiece. In lots of machine shops, I see an old manual milling machine being used as nothing but a drill press these days. The only real advantage of floor-mount is you can drill thicker work. If you don't think you'll drill anything that's too tall for the table-top unit, there's no reason to go with the floor-mount. Even if you bolt the base down, you still have the wobbliness of the column, which is noticeable. On the odd occasion when you need to drill something large with a table-top drill press, you can swing the head over the side and support the work on some stack of stuff. Of course this assumes you have a sturdy bench. I would be a little dubious of any sort of pre-fabricated stand. Discarded kitchen cabinets, if you get them for free, are great in the workshop because they're generally pretty stiff and they come with storage space. Even a simple box built out of 2x4s and OSB or plywood with a particle-board top is likely to be stiffer than a store-bought stand.