Hello, our team is in the market for a new standing drill press as our current one is inoperable and we are in need of suggestions for a replacement. We are working with a $1k-$1.5k budget with shipping to the East Coast. Any help would be much appreciated!
This thread could be a good read.
I wouldn’t spend more than a $200 on a drill press. Look on facebook marketplace or craigslist in your area and find something. If there’s nothing decent in your area a harbor freight benchtop one will do fine for less than $100. Save the $1000 for some other tool purchase.
I’m not saying a cheap drill press is good by the way, I’m saying the best drill press in the universe is pretty limited. A drill press still requires a skilled user to spend time laying out and center punching a part for any kind of accuracy. A cordless drill and a bench vise will do most anything a drill press will with only a small cost in straightness, and the hand drill and vise are useful for so much more. If you want accurate machining you need a mill with a DRO or a CNC and your $1000 budget will cover a big portion of a used Bridgeport or a small CNC. If you can’t save the money until a bigger purchase can be made, get a 3d printer or some cordless tools.
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I’ll note that probably the main exception is “large holes with precise diameter”. Even then, it’s more to do with taking the “steadiness of hand” and “strength of grip when the drill cuts loose” variables out of the equation than with anything else.
My team bought this drill press a few years ago and have loved it ever since. It has a great build quality and a lot of features for the price.
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I’ll agree that $1k+ is more than a drill press is worth, because I understand you can get a mill or 3D printer way better than any drill press for that. On the other end, a really cheap one (e.g. Harbor Freight) is likely a waste of money because some of them cannot even be reliably adjusted so the table is square with the bit. Look for one you can physically check, and be sure the table is inherently square or adjustable to square with the bit on both horizontal axes, and the action of both table and bit are smooth with no detectable play. If any of these things are missing, you will probably regret the purchase. [Been there, done that.]
An adjustable speed press is worth a few extra dollars (30 to 50 ?) if you will be regularly using it for steel in addition to the FRC standards of polycarbonate, wood, and aluminum; most single speed drill presses are designed for wood, and will work well on polycarb and aluminum, but steel will require a much lighter feed force. If changing speed involves manually moving a belt among pulleys, establish and train a standard operating procedure that this is only done when the device is UNPLUGGED. Then, put a reminder sign on the cover you have to remove to access the belt.
In any case, also invest in a set of clamps, preferably those which attach to slots in the table. It minimizes the chance of the piece moving, and keeps hands safely away from the drill bit and able to hit the power switch should something go wrong.
I think it depends. If I get a grant and someone else is offering to pay for it, I’d take the best and most expensive one I could get. And more than one.
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If you can find a used drill press that feels solid, that’s your best bet. All the small benchtop drill presses are going to be roughly the same. The biggest upgrade you can get on a drill press is one with a low speed down to 100-200 RPM, as this is useful for reaming out bearing holes and deburring with a countersink. Otherwise, your standard 600-2000RPM benchtop drill press off Amazon is fine. The $1000 can go elsewhere.
You could also get the latter type of drill press and combine that with a tapping head to do quick tapping of plates, but it’s more for fun than a real upgrade over a combined drill/tap in a hand drill.
If you have exactly $1500 to spend from a grant specifically on a drill press, maybe see if you can get a benchtop mill instead and use that as a drill press with a very precise XY table.
Shop space is at a premium (usually) so it’s unlikely you’ll need more than a single drill press at any given time.
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I LOVE tapping heads!!! …a new Tapmatic for up to 1/4 threads will eat up most of the proposed budget.
A tapping head used as a second op will free up CNC time to make accurate, repeated, cuts rather than tapping holes. YMMV.
I would recommend getting the slowest RPM drill press you can find in your budget.
Where a drill press really proves itself more valuable than a skilled hand drill user is for reaming out bearing holes in parts or using an annular cutter to drill bearing holes. When reaming out holes you really want to run the drill press as slow as you possibly can to make the hole quality the best it can be and so that it is safer as it is less likely for the reamer to catch the part and spin it out of your hands or the vise.
We got this drill press 2 years ago that has a VFD that allows it to go down to 46 RPM and it has been fantastic, however it is over 3x your budget.
Dake also makes a slightly smaller one for $550 less.
A much more economical option to get the same functionality would be to retrofit a traditional step pulley drill press with a VFD such as what was done here.
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I have the same model in my basement, and I wish anything at the school worked as well.
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The caveat to buying used is if your school will let you. I bought a really nice used Wilton drill press for 150, but after asking the school if they would reimburse it, they said their insurance wouldn’t cover buying used shop equipment.
https://www.grizzly.com/products/shop-fox-13-1-4-benchtop-oscillating-drill-press/w1668
We really enjoy our grizzly oscillating drill press. We use it for drilling obviously but then we can swap some belts around and get an oscillating sander. We use this heavily when prototyping with plywood or plastics to remove tabs from CNCing. It’s also nice for bearing holes and other cleanup. It was a little bit pricey but at the time we had the budget for it.
You can also adjust the RPM of the drill by swapping belts. The bed has a rotation gauge for doing angled drilling as well. There is a taller freestanding version but we put this shorter one on a bench. We haven’t found a need for a taller one yet.
Range of Spindle Speeds: 250 – 3050 RPM
Drilling Capacity: 5/8 in. in Steel
This has been good enough for what we do. If we have ever needed more power we do have a Bridgeport and an Omio but 5/8 inch steel is pretty hefty.
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We have this one, or a model smaller, in our pit and it has made us more than a few friends over the years. It is great for FRC use.
edit: @J.Martinez303, worth considering a drill press that can go to the pit with you (which a freestanding drill press likely cannot). Then spend the balance of budget on more interesting and useful items.
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We have the 8 inch model of that and it serves our needs just fine.
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