pillar drill as milling machine

[tombardier]

Greetings all.

I have a nice little metal lathe but I'd love to be able to do some milling. I can't afford a full milling machine so I was thinking of a pillar drill, mounted over the lathe bed and utilising the slides i already have. Now I've seen one of these for £100 second hand and the spindle has an mt2 taper. Would I be able to fit an mt2 collet holder in there and use edge mills etc?

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/cdp10b-drill-press

Thanks for any advice. I don't know too much about this stuff

 

[BrokenBiker]

to be honest i would avoid using a drill as a milling machine at all costs. It is not designed to take the forces involved. Plus if you consider the up and down movement of the spindle to be the 'z' axis, you still have no control or adjustment of the x or y axis'. Plus from what i can see no locking spindle height, so no consistent cutting depth.

Imo i would save until i could afford a little Chester or similar that is designed for the job you want it to

*edit, didn't read about mounting it over the lathe, but even using the lathe slides as x and y you will still have issues such as locking the spindle in place for milling across the top of a job

 

[711jrp]

How about a milling adapter to replace the tool post? might be a easier conversion.

 

[brightspark]

Greetings all.

I have a nice little metal lathe but I'd love to be able to do some milling. I can't afford a full milling machine so I was thinking of a pillar drill, mounted over the lathe bed and utilising the slides i already have. Now I've seen one of these for £100 second hand and the spindle has an mt2 taper. Would I be able to fit an mt2 collet holder in there and use edge mills etc?

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/cdp10b-drill-press

Thanks for any advice. I don't know too much about this stuff [/quotejust buy a vertical slide for your lathe and use the chuck for the cutters if u want small milling jobs doing .if the lathe is light duty u will get a lot of chatter on your cross and topslide . not good

clarke drills arent that robust for drilling never mind milling

 

[tombardier]

OK. So with a lockable depth it could be usable though? I don't need to do much milling really. Just would like to have the capability to do some straight cuts . Would getting a vertical slide and having to remove my Chuck from the lathe every time really be a better solution?

 

[tombardier]

Brightspark. Ignore what I wrote before editing. I've seen your comment inside the quoted text now

 

[Fazerruss]

You could pick up a vertical slide for your lathe second hand. What make is your lathe?

 

[waddycall]

milling machines usually have a drawbar which is a long bolt passing through the hollow spindle which pulls the tooling into the taper. AFAIK pillar drills don't usually have drawbars or hollow spindles which means side loaded tools (milling) can work loose from the taper. This can also happen if you try milling with an end mill held in a taper fit drill chuck. What size components do you want to mill? Could you try a vertical slide on your lathe for milling using the machine spindle to hold the tool (I think what 711 means)?

 

[BrokenBiker]

OK. So with a lockable depth it could be usable though? I don't need to do much milling really. Just would like to have the capability to do some straight cuts . Would getting a vertical slide and having to remove my Chuck from the lathe every time really be a better solution?

i would consider it a safer solution. If you don't want to do much then a milling slide would be my choice. I am lucky enough to have a small mill but still have milling attachme ts for the lathes too

 

[brightspark]

Brightspark. Ignore what I wrote before editing. I've seen your comment inside the quoted text now

i said vertical slide not the horizontal ones on the lathe edit no problem

 

[tombardier]

Thanks for advice. I've got a perfecto which is a British made carbon copy of the myford ml2/ml4. It's got an mt2 taper in the head stock spindle.

The thing is I do need a pillar drill too. Would love to stretch to an actual milling machine but perhaps I should get a cheaper pillar drill and then look at milling attachments for the lathe

 

[Pete.]

As waddycall said, if you don't have a drawbar you can't mill in it. The collet adapter will fall out regularly.

 

[Lawnmowerboy]

You can't put axial load on a morse taper or a Jacobs chuck. You need proper collets that pull up into a spindle you can clamp cutters into the 3jaw on your lathe. End mills and slot drills would be all you can use though.

 

[BrokenBiker]

just to add, clamping milling cutters in a 3 jaw lathe chuck will work, but beware that holding hardened steel cutters in hardened steel jaws will carry the chance of the cutter coming loose. That said, i do it when i cant be bothered to remove the chuck and it always works fine for me

 

[tombardier]

I had a reply from someone else (MrFluffy), mailed to me, but it's not here now?

I'm still mulling this over in any case. I'm thinking I'm going to have to just get a normal pillar drill short-term, and try to do some milling on the lathe when I need to I'm not precisely sure whether myford vertical slides will fit if they were made for the ml7 rather than my ml2/4 though. Will measure to measure my slots

I'd like to upgrade to something a bit more modern at some point. Perhaps if I were to sell the lathe, I could get another machine with some tooling and a vertical slide already (and all the other bits I don't have like faceplate, 4-jaw chuck, change wheels - I could go on!

Thanks for your advice - I have listened

 

[Robotstar5]

We had a pillar drill that was designed to be used as an occasional miller.

 

[BrokenBiker]

you can make any slide fit providing its not massively too big. I have an atlas milling slide on my Chester lathe, and have a t slitted carriage on the r and a and am trying to work out the easiest way to make one so i can just bolt a drill press vice to it and still have enough control

 

[MattF]

The Warwick that I have came with a home made angle plate made out of simple angle iron, if I recall correctly. I had just popped it to one side when I got it and never paid it much attention, but running over it's design in my mind, (sad, I know, when you can visualise a lump of iron from around three years ago in your mind ), it appears he had made that so that it clamps down via the Tee slots in the cross slide and then either the top slide else a drill vice clamps via two holes on the front face of the angle, facing the chuck. A simple verticle slide else adjustable height arrangement via the vice mounting slots. I'll have to test that hypothesis when I dig it out, but that should be a simple way of adding basic milling capability to yours.

The Roundbeds came with a similar design of milling plate. Right angled cast block which mounted to the cross slide which had several Tee slots on the front face for affixing the workpiece.

 

[grumpy grandad]

I have used a pillar drill for milling for an odd job by making a jig to hold the piece down and a long bolt secured to the drilling platform to pull the jig toward the milling cutter Two support pieces fixed to the drilling platform preventing sideways movement of the jig. It worked very well but I was cutting only 4mm mild steel (wheel) and anything thicker it would have struggled I think. Milling cutter 7/16 inch had a parallel shank so fitted in the existing chuck.
Hope this helps

 

[Lawnmowerboy]

Only other thing Is that milling cutters will walk in and out of a chuck when side loaded. Jacobs chucks are not meant for milling or side load.