Pillar Drill Vice Mounting

I have recently bought an old pillar drill with a flat table, i.e. no T-slots or mounting holes. I would like to mount a typical drilling vice on it.

Could anyone please give me some insight into the safest ways to do this?

Is there any way you could clamp around the edges of the table? If theres enough room you could use some big toolmakers clamps on the sides. Other than that i would say even just 1 centre hole would've made this alot easier.

You could mount the vice to a wooden board and then clamp the edges with small g-clamps maybe?

You will need to adjust the position of the vice on the table so simple tapped holes or fixing to a simple board probably won't be versatile enough. How about making T slot substitutes by fixing plates with the edges machined L fashion onto the exisitng table. If you have room five slots would be good. Two arranged so the vice is central, one in the middle and one each side so the vice can be offset to either side. If don't have facilities to mill the edges of teh plates a sandwich construction with a smaller plate underneath an larger one to give the necessary overhanging edge works well. Cut from stock material. Hopefully bar stock of suitable dimesnions can be found. Hard work cutting out of larger plates, even with a decent vertical bandsaw. Plasma cutters are fast but leave a hard, rough edge. 1 mm cutting disks in an angel gridner work well but you will need several and have to be careful not to break them.

For sheet work I like an "improved wood" sub table from ex-kitchen cabinet or similar sources fixed direct to the table. Wood or chipbaord screws hold the sheet down just fine. Use more of the ex-cabinet material for straps if you can't fit screws inside to hold the middle bits.

Clive.

Ralph

Drill and tap to suit a cross vice, reduces the gap to the chuck slightly but would suit most jobs.

Emgee

It depends on the style of table to some extent. If it's round, rotates and can be swung around the drill can be positioned anywhere over the table.

The next thing is the vice. With this style I would probably start thinking about clamping when drilling over 3/8 dia

**LINK**

However I think mine is 100mm. It was made in India as well. The retailer thought it was better than the Taiwanese they were also selling so it was old stock. They may be available from Rotagrip but wont be Indian anymore. They are fairly long so provide plenty of leverage by hand to stop things spinning.

Sometimes I will just use a bolt head in a slot as a rotational stop rather than clamp. More often than clamp actually.

John

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Get a small length of aluminium profile and bolt to the table. Instant T-slots. Small lengths are not too pricey and if the table is wider a couple of sections side by side. Widely used for light router beds.

Cheers John

The Warco DE-VICE is a neat idea:

http://www.warco.co.uk/59-1526-thickbox/de-vice-work-holding-system.jpg

**LINK**

Should be easy enough to make your own version of it.

Edited By Vic on 24/03/2016 14:25:20

T slots are OK for production drilling where jigs and holding devices can be configured to them. But have a very small envelope when used with a machine vice , unless you are only interested in drilling over a small area. What I did was to convert the underneath of the table to a flat surface so G clamps can be used and importantly can be moved over the complete underneath of the table. It was simply to insert a piece of melamine covered chip board on suitably shaped spacers with holes through where the slots and centre hole were. The spacers were stuck onto the bottom of the table with car filler or such like and gauged up all to be the same distance from the top surface. The melamine chipboard was then screwed to the spacers. Its worked out very well. The only knock on effect was that my toggle clamp had to have its fixing thread extended to cope with the much thicker table.

I like that Warco idea, just needs to have a toggle clamp mounted on its end instead of the vice.

Frank

Yes, the thing that Warco is selling is a nice idea that you could mimic to some extent simply by screwing a bit of studding in the back or side of a vise and ensuring it's up against the pillar when to start. That's sort of what I tend to do when drilling in a pillar drill, usually by ensuring the work or vise is abutted against something immovable. The collar clamp on the Warco device also prevents the whole chebanc coming up off the table during a jam.

My Progress pillar drill has a cam lock clamp rather like this although mine's a British version with a body made of cast iron. Slides freely up and down the column, swings across the table and then everything locks in place when the cam lever is operated. It's a fine piece of kit and dead handy, especially when the work won't fit in a vise. I could imagine the two devices together would cover most jobs and reduce the frequency of those rubber pants moments.

It used to be possible to buy a gadget, a bit like a Mole wrench with a pivoting pad attached to one jaw, whilst the other "jaw" clamped to the table. With one of these, and single hole drilled in the table, (in the right place) it ought to be possible to clamp work, or maybe even a drill vice. Having, when youngert, had a drill grab and hurl the vice onto the floor, do make sure that things are secure!

Howard

You can still get the "Mole Wrench" style clamp or you can modify an old clamp. There was an article in MEW (Issue 202, May 2013) describing howto. Or from ** Drill Press Clamp ** which is a variation on the theme.

John

Edited By Journeyman on 24/03/2016 18:41:15

Excellent point.

The Warco De-Vice, along with most other single point holding systems, gives the vice a lot of leverage against the actual restraining device. Such restraints are usually mostly, if not all, friction devices rather than positive stops. It seems to me that they are best thought of as being for holding the vice and work piece in the right place to start drilling rather than security against disaster when the brown'n sticky hits the rotating blades. With the De-Vice I'd definately be hanging on to the vice handle whilst drilling. Hopefully the vice is a bit less wimpy in real life than it appears in the pictures.

Problem with working in that manner is that should anything go wrong you need to let go of either vice or drill feed to hit the emergency stop. Depending on what problems the shop gremlins have arranged this time letting go of one or the other could vary from worriesome to downright dangerous. Realistically if you need one hand on the vice and one on the feed a foot operated emergency stop button down on the floor could be a sensible precaution. Depending on the size of work involved of course. My gear driven, 3 MT spindle, Pollard 15AY demands a lot more respect than a baby Proxxon. I've never actually got round to hooking up a foot switch on the Pollard but my normal work holder is the largest size cross vice solidly bolted to the table. Jobs which don't fit in that get other, equally robust, fixing down. When I'm worried about job security its time for one hand on the feed and one hand about 1/4" off the stop button.

Clive.

Edited By Clive Foster on 24/03/2016 18:40:17

Edited By Clive Foster on 24/03/2016 18:41:16

Edited By Clive Foster on 24/03/2016 19:07:55

How about using one of these from Axminster

You would probably only need to drill a couple of holes in the table to give you a good range of positions

HTH,

Rod

Edited By Roderick Jenkins on 24/03/2016 19:09:19

Edited By mike T on 24/03/2016 19:14:13

This wouldn't be a drill with an unusually high set of speeds would it?

The only drill without slots I've ever seen was a high speed one meant to use very small drill bits. Sometimes known as a sensitive drill.

Yep Ralph

I use Rod's method - although my table does have some slots.

The important thing is to avoid using just your hand to keep the work in place !

Norman

I always use at least one bolt - clamp. I use a quick clamping bolt idea seen in Model Engineer many years ago - maybe the 1950s? The writer said he used it to clamp a machine vise to his shaper table. I have found it to be very good on my big bench drill.

John

Thank you all for the replies.

Many ideas to think about and some not too far from what I had thought, so all the more encouraging.

To my knowledge it is not a high speed drill, it is a type of the common curved, cast body drills and was made around 1900 or so. Will take about 18 in. or so in diameter up to the column so not small but not large either.