Mill in a drill press?

[nissancrawler]

I'm wondering if there's any reason I can't use a mill bit (sorry if I used the wrong name) in my drill press and use the vise as a feed for cutting small slots and such? Example: I'm making some ammo can mounts on my trailer, and had to drill holes, then plasma/die grind out the rest to make a slot for a loop to go through for a lock.

I know it won't be exactly precise, and don't care for what I will use it for. It will be very occasional use, so I'm assuming the wear on the spindle would be minimal. I would drill as many holes as I could, then use the mill to clean the slot up.

Bad? Good? Not good but ok for occasional use? Suggestions on what type of bit to use? (I'm ignorant to machining.)

[fabcam]

I think the side load will tear a standard drill press into pieces.

[JeffHPK5]

I would not recommend trying to mill in a drill press, the bearings/bushings aren't designed for side load. The slot you generate will look like absolute shit, and you might get a face full of end mill for your efforts!

[Bolt Thrower]

I was actually thinking of going this route with my HF 20". If it tore up the spindle bearings I'd just replace them with some better quality bearings as a band aid.

[DUG]

I think the side load will tear a standard drill press into pieces.

Ditto.

Why not just use the mill to punch as many overlapping holes as you can? With a mill you can start with half of it not on the material.

Trying to drag the material through the mill with the vice is asking tohave the spindle shit in the bed.

[PTSchram]

The instant you apply a side load to the chuck, it will come flying out at you!

Unless you weld the chuck into place, it ain't gonna stay. I've tried everything and it just don't work!

[nissancrawler]

Ditto.

Why not just use the mill to punch as many overlapping holes as you can? With a mill you can start with half of it not on the material.


How well would that work? Could the slot be more or less cleaned up with this method? I'm not asking for a perfect cut, just something that would work to get a loop through for a lock, etc. I was wondering about the spindle, which is why I asked.

Second question: Would a crappy HF mill work well enough for this type of operation, if the above doesn't work?

[nissancrawler]

The instant you apply a side load to the chuck, it will come flying out at you!

Unless you weld the chuck into place, it ain't gonna stay. I've tried everything and it just don't work!

I haven't had that problem yet, I've been doing it with a drill bit, but was worried about the spindle.

[JeffHPK5]

The cheapo HF mill will be 1000% better than a end mill in a drill chuck.

An end mill is designed to cut with the sides of the cutter where a drill cuts with the point only.

Cutting small semi-circles still puts a good bit of the tool (50%) in contact with the metal being cut , it will most likely climb in the steel and "waller out" the slot and look like shit.

[nissancrawler]

That's what I needed to know, thanks guys.:smokin:

[solarpower]

If your are going to hold onto a end mill like seen here:http://highspeedmachining.mae.ufl.edu/gatormill_endmill_02.jpg
in a drill chuck then no no no no no no no.

IF and this is a BIG IF...you can get a solid/spring collet like this:http://www.efunda.com/processes/machining/images/mill/spd_mill_collet_2_4_13.gif
that to go into your spindle then you COULD get a cross slide vice that can be anchored to the table like this:http://www.toolspot.co.uk/products/Clamps/4in%20Cross%20Slide%20Vice%20Taiwan_f.jpg

and do it with a reasonable amount of safety. But eventually your spindle bearings will detonate.

If you drill multiple holes side by side then using the tools I've pictured to finish the slot, it will extend the life of the spindle bearings.

Did I mention NOT to put a end mill into a drill chuck???:D

[Wicked_S10]

When I first determined I needed a mill for the shop, I went to HF and bought a $600 small bench top verticle mill. The Mill was a POS, no matter what I did, or how light of cuts I took with it the head would swing on the column. It's head and column were very similar to a drill press, but the head moved up and down the column on a rack, not the table. I tightened the clamps on the head until the casting split was touching, and it still was no where near rigid enough to cut even .125 plate. I took it back 2 days after I bought it.

I bought a cross slide vise like pictured above and put it on my big drill press. First off, let me say that having a cross slide vise like that, even a cheap one, makes a drill press a much more useable machine, as a drill press. I used it to cut 1/2" wide slots in 3/16" plate for several months while I watched for a used knee mill in my price range. I found that by using a roughing end mill, also known as a corn cob cutter, it produced a serviceable slot. Any standard EM just wouldn't cut with it, it is not rigid enough.

I eventually found a old Gorton mill about 50 miles from me for $500. I bought it and even though it is old and tired, it out preforms the drill press by a huge percentage.

On a side note, I have a fairly expensive craftsman drill press, and the spindle bearings have never been the same since I used it as a mill. I will get around to tearing it down and rebuilding it eventually, but it is hard on the equiptment using it for something other than it's intended purpose.

There are some interesting writeups on the web about turning a standard bench top drill press into a mini mill. It is gheto, but the guys that use it seem to have fairly good results and it is cheap.

I believe you can buy morse taper weldon end mill holders. It would go a long ways toward using a drill press as a mill. Almost all drill press's have a MT in the spindle, and the chuck is just on a MT to jacobs taper arbor. You get a wedge, and drive it in the slot in your quill and you will be able to pop out the JT arbor with chuck attached. Whatever you do, if you want to make the drill press work well, you will have to make it much more rigid. I have seen writeups where people stacked the quill basically full of spindle bearing to help stabalize the spindle. My Gorton mill has 5 precision spindle bearings, most drill presses have just a pair of cheap tapered roller bearings, some of the cheap imports simply use bushings...

You can buy a small cross slide table and machinist vise from enco for a reasonable price. The cross slide tables are a lot more percise then the cheap cross slide vise that HF and some of the import companies sell.

I will look around later and try to find some of the drill press conversion articles I have seen.

Later,
Jason

[nissancrawler]

Cool, thanks. I do have a good cross slid vise for mine, I wouldn't drill any other way. There's nothing worse than praying your work won't rip your fingers off.

[Wicked_S10]

Here are a few links to help you out:

drill press turned CNC mini mill (http://www.pathcom.com/~vhchan/cnc/cnc.html)

Practicle machinist thread with lots of good info (http://www.practicalmachinist.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=023166;p=0)

There is also a video I have seen floating around on u-tube. Guy named Jose, I believe, and the title, IIRC is milling with out a mill or something to that affect. I will try to find it if I can get on u-tube at work here. Anyhow, the video is incredibly dry and boring, but the guy tells you how he turned a drill press into a mill, and then shows you some video of it cutting. He claims some pretty unlikely accuracy numbers, but who knows...

Good Luck,
Jason

[jnutter]

Count me as one more guy that tried milling in a drill press with a cross slide vise, realized it was stupid or me to think my cheap HF drill press would work as a mill (the chuck flying out was a clue) and bought a real knee mill. My first mill was a round arm Bridgeport with n M head, commonly called the Baby Bridgeport. It was money well spent and when it was time to upgrade to a bigger mill, the Baby Bridgeport was still pretty much worth what I paid for it.

I don't think you can go wrong with a real knee mill - even a small one.

[nissancrawler]

I don't have the cash for a mill right now. I'll just stick to drilling holes/plasma/die grinder route.

I wish I had $2000 or so for one.

[Scott@Rockstomper]

I tried the cross slide vise in a drill press thing too.

Problem for me was, the taper that the chuck goes onto, pops off when exposed to a bit of side load and a little tool chatter. So the chuck kept popping off just like PTSchram pointed out.

I'd suggest as others already have, if you need "just a few" slots, drill a row of holes and connect the dots with a little cutoff saw, a jigsaw, plasma/torch, or whatever, and cleanup with a die grinder or cutoff wheel. If you need "lots of" slots, it's time to look into a mill, a plasma, or taking the parts to somebody with a real mill to have them do it.

[Wicked_S10]

I don't have the cash for a mill right now. I'll just stick to drilling holes/plasma/die grinder route.

I wish I had $2000 or so for one.

If you buy some good carbide burrs for that die grinder, you should be able to chain drill the slots and cut the remainder with the die grinder w/ very good results and fairly quickly. The cheap ass die grinder accessories at HF, HD, and Slowes always made me wonder what the point in having a die grinder was... I ordered some good carbide burrs from production tool supply for a project, and was like holy shit! I know have an electric die grinder as well as air, and a pretty good collection of burrs. Makes them worth their weight in gold.

It doesn't take $2k to buy a mill. You can find ones in decent shape for under $1K pretty easily. Even a beat to hell machine will cut slots to reasonable tolerance all day long...

Later,
Jason

[nissancrawler]

I'm dumping too much money into my other junk right now. I have a ton of rotary files (carbide burrs) at work, I'll bring them home and try it. I have a plasma, but it still requires cleaning up.

[Wicked_S10]

I'm dumping too much money into my other junk right now. I have a ton of rotary files (carbide burrs) at work, I'll bring them home and try it. I have a plasma, but it still requires cleaning up.

Just go get a loan, and buy one. You know you NEEEEEED it! :smokin:

As for the rotary file thing, I thought that rotary files had a different flute geometry than burrs. I am not making anything near a statement of fact, I just know that the few rotary files I had, that were labeled as such, were damn near useless in steel. Perhaps it is just another common name for a burr. You should have some high quality tools at work regardless. You're a aircraft mechanic, right? Any in house machine shop? Someone there ought to be able to hook you up.

Later,
Jason

[nissancrawler]

Yeah, I'm an aircraft mechanic. Rotary files may be different, I don't know enough about that stuff. I might as well try it though. As for machining, there's an entire factory of machining, but no dice getting anything there.

[jnutter]

It doesn't take $2k to buy a mill. You can find ones in decent shape for under $1K pretty easily. Even a beat to hell machine will cut slots to reasonable tolerance all day long...



Second on that statement.

My first mill - the Baby Bridgeport was $1100 and came with a vise. (Tradin Times ad)

Next was a big old Kempsmith horizontal for $95 with a couple hundred pounds of tooling (local online machine tool auction), I cut my first axle shaft splines on that mill. Put an angle plate on a horizontal mill and you can cut slots just like on a vertical. You need to get used to looking at the work in a different way though.

Then I sold the Baby Bridgeport and replaced with with a Gorton Mastermil 1-22for $700 (ebay) - don't let the price fool you, after using a Gorton Mastermil you will think even the tightest full sized manual Bridgeport is made of Jello.

I also paid $700 for my lathe - and I love that lathe. The only mill I paid any serious money for was my CNC - and it is worth every penny :)

None of these purchases was luck. I spent a lot of time educating myself about different types of mills, where to find info on different types of mills, local auction houses, ebay buying, other local machine tool sources, different types of spindle tapers and where to find non-R8 tooling (clue - you can save a bundle by buying a machine with a B&S9 spindle because most people won't buy any mill unless the spindle is R8 -- they don't realize that there were a ton of B&S9 machines made and the tooling is still available new and doesn't cost much more than R8 tooling) and most importantly - how to safely move the machines myself, what machines I could safely move myself and when to hire a professional to move the machines. I also went to a lot of machine auctions for a while and talked to a lot of the guys that tend to hang around these auctions. If I saw the same guy at more than one or two auctions, I made a point to try to strike up a conversation. Some of those guys love to talk and you can learn a lot about machines and where and how to find cheap machines from them and also about the local riggers and who is best and cheapest. Even the machines themselves taught me lessons, for example the Baby Bridgeport taught me what features it was missing that I needed in my next mill. None of this knowledge cost a much, but it saved me a lot of $$$$.

[JeffHPK5]

I take for granted the fact that I've worked in the same tool shop for 18+ years and can use any one of the 24 Bridgeport's in the tool room.

Our shop just sold an old variable head knee mill with power X and digital readout for $2200 , I could have got it for $1500. The thing is I've spent a couple thousand hrs. in front of a mill I sure don't want to look at one at home..:D