Converting a hand powered drill press to electrical

[RainbowsParticipant @rainbows]

[RainbowsParticipant @rainbows]

Another crazy thread by rainbows? You can all see the back of me when that chicago drill arrives and I spend some days checking its safe and all.

Now a while ago I got an old hand driven drill press off a booty sale.

I do have a cheapy NuTool drill press but this one takes more taper drills, also it seems a shame to have it just laying around.

If I splice some old leather belts together and attach the big handle wheel onto a motor will anything bad happen as far as anyone can guess? Never used flatbelts before. Always been small vee belts.

[john carruthersParticipant @johncarruthers46255]

If you can get the belt to stay on. Or go for a friction drive, a rubber roller on the motor bearing on the hand wheel?

[paul 1950Participant @paul1950]

that drill has a power feed forget it, it's a good tool as it is

[David JuppParticipant @davidjupp51506]

If you do try adding power – also add guarding, those exposed gears would make a mess of fingers, hair, clothing…

[IanTParticipant @iant]

These old drills work pretty well just as they are Rainbows – just hand crank them.

You are not going to be able to use very small drills with it but these drills work pretty well with larger bits where their slower speed is an advantage. You mentioned taper-shanked drills and these will tend to be in the larger sizes I suspect.

With a sharp drill bit these old hand cranked drills will work better (with larger bits) than trying to use an electric hand drill (even in a stand) exactly because you can apply a good deal of pressure & torque at a slower speed with them. It's a two hand job applying the feed as you turn the handle – you'll soon get the knack of it – and it's not particularly arduous to do.

Regards,

IanT

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

A couple of idle thoughts on this:

That big hand wheel might work like a flywheel, giving trouble with both speed control and belt drive.

Stopping it all rapidly in an emergency could also be a problem.

I second the other comments on here about guarding etc.

 

Edited By V8Eng on 06/05/2015 08:51:42

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Rainbows,

This can be seen regularly on rally fields as a means of driving a manual drill.

Just replace the Wolesley engine with an electric motor the engine runs at 650 rpm so the drill goes quite slowly.

Martin P

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I'v got an old wall type hand drill converted to electric drive, took off the flywheel, and hand crank, fitted a V pulley and mounted a 1/3hp 1450rpm motor on the wall above the drill press. It runs(fairly noisily) at around 120rpm. First thing after motorization, make and fit a guard over the gears before starting to use the machine. When I got the drill at a garage sale, it had been fitted with a Jacobs chuck. The drill had belonged to the father of the chap who sold it to me, name Jacobs.

The auto feed is quite useful.

Ian S C

[RainbowsParticipant @rainbows]

Going to have to test how well it runs with handpower before I decide, get back on that when it stops raining.

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