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Drill Press or cheaper mill for $2k budget?

Being able to face something or mill a pocket only has to save your ass once or twice per year to make up for all the inefficiency at drilling when compared to a drill press.
 
This is what I replaced my drill press with.

Toolots, Inc. - Reliable Equipment Fast.

Toolots.com is a one-of-a-kind international B2B online marketplace for factory direct industrial equipment, parts and supplies.
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Get the power feed for squaring up stock.
I added my own DRO.
 
One of my first projects. Needed dedicated clamps for the vise.
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I was in the same boat as you a few years ago. I was ready to spend a couple thousand for a really badass drill press. I ended up getting a mill instead. I do not regret it.
 
I started out with a hand drill, 1/2" chuck electric fucker that would break your wrists. If you were lucky enough to not break your wrists, it would bust a drill bit.

Then I got a bench top drill press. It was ok. Underpowered so it would t break drills, but you you couldnt slow the speed enough to not burn drills.

Then I got a floor mount drill press. (Chinese one). It did ok for a lot of years until I bought some end mills and tried using it as a mill. Didn't go well. I even bought a cross slide vice to get X and Y fravel and was again disappointed.

I got a mag drill in between all that at some time.

I sirched craigslist, auctions, estate sales, newspaper ads for 20 years before I finally found a J head Bridgeport. I drove 15 hours round trip on no notice, and paid double the asking price to secure it. It does everything better than all my previous tools.

Long story short, buy once cry once. You won't go wrong with a mill if you can find one. You WILL be disappointed with anything less.

If you are west of the Mississippi, finding machines is hard.
 
What are you currently drilling holes with now? $100 marketplace used drill press might be all you need. I'd start there and you might save yourself some money


bgaidan said:
A drill press makes a horrible mill.
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but its still a mill if you try hard enough

IMG-5456.jpg
 
Production environments not withstanding, floor standing drill presses made more sense back when everyone's next best drill was a 3/8 corded hand drill that had one speed that was too fast for everything.

With the proliferation better corded and cordless 1/2 drills, $300 Chinese mag drills and good ol' wrist breakers for $100 on CL the need for a drill press is pretty diminished as those tools in combination with your bench vise will cover all the slapdash hackery that's more time consuming in a mill but relatively quick on a drill press.

The people saying he should get a $2k big box store drill pressed based on a comparison of big camelbacks and radial arm drills to bridgeport sized mills are just being dumb.
 
mjlogan88 said:
What are you currently drilling holes with now? $100 marketplace used drill press might be all you need. I'd start there and you might save yourself some money



but its still a mill if you try hard enough

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Not mine, but a pic from the web. Delta 17-990. Reeves pulley always needs something fixed. Depth stop slips. Runout measures in tenths. I'm over it.

Need...I didn't need a Hypertherm plasma, 200amp Miller or cabinet tablesaw, but I also don't ever have to worry about having a tool that can't do the job.
 
AlxJ64 said:
Shame I already have a buyer for my all gear driven, 24" Barnes Gear drill. It would be exactly what you are looking for. Moving it is a little on the challenging side with the whole 3k lb situation.

Thats something else to consider with a decent size knee mill; weight of moving it. Rigidity is key in machine work. You can also hawk for a radial arm drill that is very versatile. After having one now, I don't want a regular floor or bench press.

www.ebay.com

DFW-HERCULES 3'/8" RADIAL ARM DRILL 3'8" ARM, 60-2000RPM, 18" X 26" X 15" PLATE | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for DFW-HERCULES 3'/8" RADIAL ARM DRILL 3'8" ARM, 60-2000RPM, 18" X 26" X 15" PLATE at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
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Spend some time looking around the hgr website. I've bought tons from them over the years. The only good machine tool reseller out there. They will make a deal too.

I see lots of drill presses currently listed for a few hundred.
 
patooyee said:
I was in the same boat as you a few years ago. I was ready to spend a couple thousand for a really badass drill press. I ended up getting a mill instead. I do not regret it.
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What did you get? I haven't seen your name in years.
 
Dethmachinefab said:
Spend some time looking around the hgr website. I've bought tons from them over the years. The only good machine tool reseller out there. They will make a deal too.

I see lots of drill presses currently listed for a few hundred.
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All of their stuff says parts only. Is that just so no warranty is implied?
 
Last shop I worked at, had 2 drill presses and a wore out enco in the fab shop. Over about 8 years, I never saw one of those drill presses get used....
 
I have a drill press I haven’t used it in 3-4 years. My guys occasionally use it but I don’t. Much easier for me to just toss it in the mill and have at it.
 
I have a Bport and 2 drill presses(?). Old school 15" Powermatic and a 20" Wilton, both with Reeves Drives. The Wilton is a 80-1200 rpm workhorse and gets used almost every day, mostly with with annular cutters. The Powermatic has a 1hp DC motor and kicks ass for drilling and tapping! It's so frustrating watching guys unnecessarily crank handles back and forth on a mill searching for perfection when they only need to drill a fucking clearance hole:mad3: I have a 6" milling vise on a sliding plate with T-handles to lock it down so, it's a fast set up. This is a funky, angled arrangement because the Bport was tied up but, this vice set-up rocks!

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Firstram said:
It's so frustrating watching guys unnecessarily crank handles back and forth on a mill searching for perfection when they only need to drill a fucking clearance hole:mad3:
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Let me guess, you work with guys from the "hurr durr muh tool room precision" school of machining?

For holes that don't need to be super accurate I center punch the part and then drop the point of the drill bit into the divet and wiggle the handles until I feel it center. Takes no time at all. Works good for centering on pilot holes too.
 
I looked for the longest time to find one of the smaller Bridgeport's, as I only had this much space.

20210209_163057.jpg



but only found one and it was 2 days drive (and looked beat).
Ended up with this grizzly (3 years ago). It's actually on sale a little cheaper than I paid.

www.grizzly.com

8" x 29" 2 HP Mill/Drill with Stand - Grizzly Industrial

<h1>G0705 8" x 29" 2 HP Mill/Drill with Stand</h1> <h2>A competitively priced mill worthy of being the cornerstone of your shop.</h2> <p>The G0705 8" x 29" 2 HP Mill/Drill has a 2 HP motor and enough table space to make quick work of just about any machining job you can throw at it.</p> <p>The...
www.grizzly.com www.grizzly.com

I picked up a cheap DRO, and it is a kick ass drill press. I made adjustable mounts for my front bump stops.
No drill press is getting you this type of deal with holes like this, inline, and exactly .75 inch apart.

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One thing that makes it really easy for drilling especially, is a bolt on vice

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OX1 said:
I looked for the longest time to find one of the smaller Bridgeport's, as I only had this much space.

20210209_163057.jpg



but only found one and it was 2 days drive (and looked beat).
Ended up with this grizzly (3 years ago). It's actually on sale a little cheaper than I paid.

www.grizzly.com

8" x 29" 2 HP Mill/Drill with Stand - Grizzly Industrial

<h1>G0705 8" x 29" 2 HP Mill/Drill with Stand</h1> <h2>A competitively priced mill worthy of being the cornerstone of your shop.</h2> <p>The G0705 8" x 29" 2 HP Mill/Drill has a 2 HP motor and enough table space to make quick work of just about any machining job you can throw at it.</p> <p>The...
www.grizzly.com www.grizzly.com

I picked up a cheap DRO, and it is a kick ass drill press. I made adjustable mounts for my front bump stops.
No drill press is getting you this type of deal with holes like this, inline, and exactly .75 inch apart.


One thing that makes it really easy for drilling especially, is a bolt on vice
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I've been considering something like this(or the one posted earlier) or the million other chinese versions of the same. For my use this seems better than searching all day for a steal on a decent bigass machine, that I'll never use to potential.
 
CJNTN said:
What did you get? I haven't seen your name in years.
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An old 49" Enco clone of a Bridgeport Series 1 J-Head variable speed. I would have liked a BP but around here where I live, finding anything at all is rare, much less a BP. My goal was never going to be to produce high-accuracy parts. I was just after a really badass drill press and this is what presented itself. Being able to do rudimentary milling is just a bonus.

I've been stuck in a dilapidated rental shop for the past 18 years. After a while the roof got so bad I couldn't even work in there anymore. I recently built my own shop, moved in, and am restoring all my tools from being in the humid damaged building for so long. The new shop is the completion of all my material desires in life. I love it there. If I didn't have a wife and daughter I'd live there. I'm looking forward to working on any number of projects in there over the years now. I'm going to make an effort to become active here just to kind of see what I've missed out on over the past decade. :) I hate that so much tech has gone to FB where it immediately gets lost to the ages.

I paid $2500 for the machine and it came with a bunch of bits, a complete set of collets, power feed x-axis, old-school DRO, and a nice unknown Kurt vice clone. It is 3-phase, and you will find that single-phase machines go for a premium, but I already had a rotary phase converter set up for my lathe, so I just pulled power off of that.
 

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patooyee said:
An old 49" Enco clone of a Bridgeport Series 1 J-Head variable speed. I would have liked a BP but around here where I live, finding anything at all is rare, much less a BP. My goal was never going to be to produce high-accuracy parts. I was just after a really badass drill press and this is what presented itself. Being able to do rudimentary milling is just a bonus.

I've been stuck in a dilapidated rental shop for the past 18 years. After a while the roof got so bad I couldn't even work in there anymore. I recently built my own shop, moved in, and am restoring all my tools from being in the humid damaged building for so long. The new shop is the completion of all my material desires in life. I love it there. If I didn't have a wife and daughter I'd live there. I'm looking forward to working on any number of projects in there over the years now. I'm going to make an effort to become active here just to kind of see what I've missed out on over the past decade. :) I hate that so much tech has gone to FB where it immediately gets lost to the ages.

I paid $2500 for the machine and it came with a bunch of bits, a complete set of collets, power feed x-axis, old-school DRO, and a nice unknown Kurt vice clone. It is 3-phase, and you will find that single-phase machines go for a premium, but I already had a rotary phase converter set up for my lathe, so I just pulled power off of that.
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I'm not looking forward to the salt/humidity. I'll probably be down there full time before the end of the summer. Do dehumidifiers help at all? It made a significant impact in TN, but I don't have the salt and sand in the air.
 
CJNTN said:
I'm not looking forward to the salt/humidity. I'll probably be down there full time before the end of the summer. Do dehumidifiers help at all? It made a significant impact in TN, but I don't have the salt and sand in the air.
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Where are you going?

Just depends on the building and location. If you're right on the water, there's nothing you can do. It's a continual battle of replacing and restoring things as they corrode. My parents lived right on the water and replacing every exterior door handle on the house was almost an annual occurrence. You just have to get a block or two away from the water to pretty much eliminate that problem though.

My issues were not the result of the climate. They were the result of sections of the roof collapsing, ankle-deep water flooding the building every time it rained, and continually trapping humidity in the building that rusted everything. The instant you walked in the door you could feel it on your skin, the walls, and on the surface of every metal object. My new shop has 2" spray foam on the ceiling and that humidity problem doesn't exist anymore. I highly doubt everything is going to rust like it did in the new shop. Nothing collects moisture like it used to.
 
I have a 9x42 Victor (Bridgeport clone) and two drill presses, one floor standing and one bench top. When I need to drill a hole, it is typically on the drill press, unless it is a situation where I need to get more precise w/ location than I can get w/ proper layout tools. The drill press is faster and I have a better "feel" when drilling. The heavy quill on the Bridgeport damps out a lot of the feedback I get from the drill press. That feel is especially important if you are drilling small (<0.25") holes to avoid breaking bits. The other benefit to the drill press is starting taps. You can drill the hole, swap in a tap, release the return spring tension which allows the quill to have a slight bit of downward pressure and turn the quill by hand to get the tap started perfectly. Then loosen the chuck, raise the quill and use a tap wrench to finish. You can't do that with a mill unless you have a tapping attachment and the swap-over is a lot slower. Again, this is for smaller size holes.

The other "faster" advantage to a drill press is larger drill sizes. I have quite a few taper shank drills, and although you can use an R8 adapter collet in the mill, it is faster easier in the drill press.

Just my personal preference for the type of work I do, growing up in a shop and learning from my dad who was a machinist/tool & die maker/gunsmith.

I guess I would ask why you hate your drill press? These are fairly simple machines so I am curious as to what feature(s) are causing angst?
 
I would not sweat the difference between a clone and a brand name Bridgeport at all.
 
arse_sidewards said:
I would not sweat the difference between a clone and a brand name Bridgeport at all.
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I've had two instances where I needed parts for my Enco. MSC now owns the Enco brand but they don't support it. I do have contact info for a nice lady there that knows all the old Enco parts info but I'm certain that all that info will be gone once she retires / quits / is fired. The first time she was able to help me find the exact part I needed. This most recent time the part was out of production. I took a chance and ordered the BP version. It did need a small amount of modification to work, but not bad at all. It mainly just adds some research to the repair process whereas everything is known for BP brand stuff.

The research presents another level of difficulty on top of itself though, as I've found people that own BP's to be a very unhelpful, bitchy, snooty group of people. They seem to all assume that, unless you're after .0000000001" of accuracy, you're not worth bothering with. And once they know it's not a true BP, they actively go out of their way to NOT help you.
 
I would never buy a new drill press ever. I own 4 drill presses that are old school USA made quality machines. Two are your standard sized shop drill presses like what op posted originally. The other two I have are big machines and 3 phase but are badass

FB MP or cl get something good or buy a cHiNa commie made pos.
 
patooyee said:
Where are you going?

Just depends on the building and location. If you're right on the water, there's nothing you can do. It's a continual battle of replacing and restoring things as they corrode. My parents lived right on the water and replacing every exterior door handle on the house was almost an annual occurrence. You just have to get a block or two away from the water to pretty much eliminate that problem though.

My issues were not the result of the climate. They were the result of sections of the roof collapsing, ankle-deep water flooding the building every time it rained, and continually trapping humidity in the building that rusted everything. The instant you walked in the door you could feel it on your skin, the walls, and on the surface of every metal object. My new shop has 2" spray foam on the ceiling and that humidity problem doesn't exist anymore. I highly doubt everything is going to rust like it did in the new shop. Nothing collects moisture like it used to.
Click to expand...

St Pete. The plan is to sell the house in TN and the condo there and buy a house there. If plans changed, I wouldn't be too upset.
 
CJNTN said:
I've been considering something like this(or the one posted earlier) or the million other chinese versions of the same. For my use this seems better than searching all day for a steal on a decent bigass machine, that I'll never use to potential.
Click to expand...

I got tired of looking. And most of the machine's I was looking at had issues or pieces missing (or were 3 phase).
If you tinker with that stuff a lot, it probably was not that big a deal.

The Lathe next to my Mill, from like 1918, had to be brought back to life. It's a killer machine, and I got crazy amounts
of tooling with it (worth more than the machine), but it took a while messing with it until it was usable.
I even had to fab up some missing parts.

That is one point with used machines though, many times they come with tooling. This came with my lathe.
(some of that stuff to this day I don't even know what it is :confused:)

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