And please clamp the work to the table

If this is for any sort of business or production environmnt (i.e. are you doing the work to make money), a pillar drill with a Morse taper spindle may be of great advantage.

In particular, for the size range you describe (10-13mm), that open up the possiblity for using Rotabroach-type cutters. Although more expensive to purchase than twist drills, they will be quicker for multiple holes.

Hi Noel, yes I should have said you need a low speed pistol drill, which many are two speed now-a-days, you will also need to use one that you can use with two hands, and be aware of the breakthrough, I must have drill many hundreds of 13mm holes through all sorts of thickness of steel in my day jobs, and a very god number when building my garage, using a pistol drill. My Clarke floor standing drill has a 510 Watt single phase motor on it, and I’ve drilled several 13mm holes through some quite thick mild steel all day long, and it doesn’t have a top speed of 900 rpm even, but it does have a 16mm chuck on it, and a No, 1 Morse taper in the quill. I would have thought anyone into mass production, would be drilling a large amount of holes every day, every week, and wouldn’t be asking here what size machine they would need, and they would be seeking one for industrial usage, and buying from a suitable commercial supplier, who would be able to recommend one for their particular needs.

Regards Nick.

Hi Nick, if it works thats fine but a 16mm chuck on a 1MT is pushing it. My cheap chester/Warco type has a 16mm chuck on a 3MT spindle. Noel.

Always pays to understand the requirement.  As others have asked, is this production or hobby work?

• If the requirement is occasionally drillng a few 13mm holes into smallish lumps of mild-steel, then almost any pillar drill will do the job.   I’m hobby.  The most 13mm holes I’ve drilled in a single session is 6, and my cheap little bench-top does that with no fuss. I’ve used it to drill 24 × 8mm holes through ¼” plate in quick succession, no problem.  It’s a very ordinary Clarke with a 550W single-phase motor, 50% duty cycle, and 5 belt selected speeds.
• If the requirement is to drill hundreds of 13mm holes against the clock, day after day, then get a beefier machine.  750W or more, 100% duty cycle, ideally 3-phase not single.

In my opinion industrial machines are a waste of money unless they’re used in anger.  Don’t spend good money on anything that will mostly sit rotting away in a corner.

Very cheap pillar drills are best avoided – tiny motors, low duty cycle, plastic and mazak, wobbly.

Inexpensive pillar drills are mostly OK, but don’t thrash them.  Motors overheat, the frame bends, bearings wear, chuck comes loose, and everything vibrates etc.    They’re satisfactory provided the tool is allowed to do the work rather than forced by a hasty operator, and provided the motor is given a few minutes to cool every few holes.   Most inexpensive pillar drills are ‘hobby’.

Industrial pillar drills are expensively built to do hard continuous work – even abuse.   Stiff and heavy.  Powerful 100% duty cycle motor, well-cooled.  Better bearings and drive train with less run-out.   Better chuck, with more grip.   Able to take tapered drills.   Smooth table position adjustment.   And more.   All jolly nice, but cost big dosh that a hobbyist might need elsewhere.

Size may be the most important consideration.  My little pillar drill has a shallow throat, and positioning long lengths of angle-iron is a pain. Only just big enough for my needs and I’d buy a floor standing pillar drill if I had to drill big items.

Speed about 500rpm.   Bit faster for free-cutting, slower for tougher mild-steel.

Keep the feed-rate low on a hobby drill –  ribbons coming off steadily with mild force, no smoke.  I judge motor load by ear, aiming to hear it work without labouring.  Definitely drill a pilot as recommended by others – takes time, but reduces cutting forces considerably, as does some cutting fluid.

Industrial drills can be forced to get through work much faster, and without a pilot hole.  Though highly stressed the machine is designed to take a beating.  High production speed isn’t always good:  twist drills wear out rapidly, especially cheap ones, and a need to drill hundreds of holes quickly makes it necessary to buy high-end twist drills – don’t skimp.   Inexpensive twist drills give good service in my experience, but only when driven at hobby rates.  Second-hand may not be the answer because many commercially driven pillar drills are driven hard for years.  Problem is spares are usually full price, perhaps more than the drill is worth.   Condition is everything, not the brand.

I’d cheerfully buy a high-end pillar drill if I had masses of drilling to do, but I don’t.   My cheap little Clarke is 14 years old and still in perfect working order…   A Meddings would have been a poor choice for me:  high purchase price, taking up space I can’t spare, and rarely switched on.   Others make full use of them – it depends on what the workshop is for.

Dave

On 17 January 2026 at 16:15 noel shelley Said:

ROTABROACH s are normally a 3/4″ weldon shank only found on a mag drill and needing 1100 W motor.

The magnetic drilling machine’s motor is sized to cope with the largest diameter for which it is specified, so saying 1100w is needed is not correct.

At the small size mentioned, the required power will be a lot less. Common sense would tell you that pushing a 13mm annular cutter through a piece of steel will take less power than a 13mm twist drill, with the added bonus of not needing a pilot hole.

Morse to Weldon adaptors are available (at rip-off prices) to allow the cutters to be used in a drill press. A Morse shank ER32 collet chuck (and one single collet) will also work.

10mm size annular cutters are available. £8.72 here: https://www.weldingsuppliesdirect.co.uk/mag-drill-hss-cutter-10mm-short-25mm-with-universal-19mm-weldon-shank.html

13mm Presto drill £3.90 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/152871318118)

If the labour to drill the holes is being used for commercial ends (see Robert’s astute question), the time saving would soon exceed the £4.82 difference.

I’d been brung up to define a pillar drill as one standing on the floor – to which it is securely bolted by proper anchors -and a bench drill as similar but with a low column for bolting to a sturdy bench.

The thickness of the intended work does not really influence the power needed. You say the maximum thickness is <8mm, so not particularly deep.

Most drilling machines have a central hole in the table for the drill to pass clear through: we have all seen machines with an arc of pits each side of that hole, thanks to abuse by idle bodgers! I expect many of us have also seen drilling-vices that have been attacked by carbide-molared mice.

Whatever the cutting-tool, clamp the work securely. 

This may be in a drilling-vice bolted to the table (ensuring the drill will not touch the vice), or directly to the table by suitable fences and clamps, and again, again so the drill does not drill the machine.

Set the quill depth-stop. Test the set-up without a workpiece for drill-bit clearance.

My Meddings bench drill has no separate table, and no central hole in its base so I aim for the centre of one of the two T-slots.

If you are drilling a batch of components it’s often worth fitting a temporary end-stop for the work to aid repeatability. This can be as simple as a spare clamp held to the table with a normal Tee-nut, stud, etc.

.

Dave refers to the difficulty of holding long work-pieces. Applicable also to horizontal band-saws without proper bar-stands, this can necessitate some improvising, e.g,..

– If room, a “Workmate” type bench with some suitable timber packing or a screw-jack clamped to it,

– A length of wood clamped at the right height across the door-frame or to some structure like a bench,

– A sturdy hook or some other feature in the ceiling from which a cord can suspend the outer end. (In my workshop it’s a lightweight travelling crane, but I have also used those other ideas!)

On 17 January 2026 at 18:19 Chris Crew Said:

Best thing to do is go in to your nearest Machine Mart tomorrow (they’re open Sundays) and have look at what they have got. All the Chinese/Taiwanese manufactured bench or floor standing models are the same, they just get branded and priced differently. There are no British manufacturers anymore and even later Meddings machines were mostly manufactured in Spain.

As I have said before on here, for over forty-years my second-hand Taiwanese bench drill has been reliable and accurate even though I was told I had been a damned fool for buying it at the time by more than one person who supposedly ‘knew’ about these things. It wouldn’t ‘think’ twice about pushing a 13mm drill through mild steel. Make sure you get one with a rotating table with ratchet rise and fall, either bench mounting or floor standing, because it makes setting up so much more convenient.

I can’t agree with your claim that ” All the Chinese/Taiwanese manufactured bench or floor standing models are the same, they just get branded and priced differently.”
While they may be built to the same design the quality varies widely. Many of the manufacturers will build to a price / quality point. Ths two rery similat tools may be very different. This has been discussed on here many times. Mostly in relation to small lathes.
I’m put Machine Mart / Clarke at about the midpoint on quality.

Robert G8RPI.

A big company like Machine Mart will be getting feedback from their stores and customers on each batch as they get sold and will have the right relationship and clout with their supplier to bring up quality issues.
A conscientious trader like Arc or Amadeal will also have a relationship and has probably had to agree a slightly higher price to get the right response to such issues.
An unknown ebay trader who just gets a dozen items to get the next price break may not care too much about quality affecting long term reputation.
The low volume relative to say television sales makes it a bit more difficult to get problems cycled round into improvements.

If a generic Clarke machine was good enough for the original Myford to invest in and use, I guess it should be good enough for anybody. I am just a little surprised that it was not of the Taiwanese Rexon brand as I was under the impression that Myford had some sort of relationship with this company at some point. They certainly imported and re-branded as Myford a range of Taiwanese milling machines at one time, selling them at a premium price because they reconfigured the electrics and possibly changed the motors. I recall seeing this operation underway on a batch of machines when I visited the works with a small group of my fellow club members in the early 1990’s but whether these were actually manufactured by Rexon or another Taiwanese company, I have no idea. Something in the back of my mind tells me that it was rumoured that Rexon might take over Myford at one point, although I may be completely incorrect on this point.

A drill press is not needed.

I have drilled several 12.7mm holes through 8mm steel with a 1200 Watt mains-power hand-held drill (on its lower gear setting), even without a pilot hole.