Milling in a pillar drill

I have a reasonable quality pillar drill. The quill has a morse taper that takes the standard Jacobs chuck. Could I fit some sort of milling chuck? I only envisage doing some light end milling mostly because I suspect the drill would struggle to do anything else.

So I am looking for advice as to the advisability of going down this path and if its feasible what sort of chuck etc. would be most suitable please.

Many thanks

Hi Nige,

How are you going to secure the MT 2 milling chuck? I would suggest without a drawbar it isn't the best idea to use a milling cutter, especially side cutting.

Tony

Rare is the drill that is better suited to milling than your lathe.

Neil

Hi Tony. i'm not entirely sure what a draw bar is or how it is used but I don't believe the drill has a taper that uses a drawbar as I have to remove the Jacobs chuck by tapping a tapered flat bar into a slot in the quill.

Thanks Neil. The lathe is not yet put back together I wish it were. Meanwhile I wanted to try and make a start on making the grinding rest in Harold Halls book 'Tool and Cutter Sharpening. the build requires a bit of 'light' milling work which I was hoping my pillar drill could cope with !

I believe one key difference between a mill that uses a Morse 2 taper and a drill using the same taper is that the mill will have a hollow spindle into which a long bolt can fit, screwed into the back of the taper. You might find your drill chuck has a 'tab' on the end which gets thumped by the wedge you use to remove it. A milling chuck on the same taper has a threaded hole to take the 'draw bar'.

Milling tends to exert very different forces on a chuck compared to drilling which can pull the chuck out of the taper, with messy consequences. The style and quality of the bearings in the drill may not suit the side loads.

Having said the above, I have successfully milled pine in my drill press, using a milling cutter held in the jacobs chuck... but I may now be banned from the forum both for suggesting milling in a drill and making something out of 'brown stuff'... 

Edited By RichardN on 02/07/2017 20:24:41

Thanks RichardN, Yes the taper on my Jacobs chuck does indeed have a tang that gets thumped by the wedge Im not sure if the taper in the quill has a thread in it I will have to have a firkle around and see what is what.

How does the 'drawbar' work on threaded hole in the milling chuck then please ?

Seems as if milling in the drill may not be a good move but I will take a look at the bearings or bushes supporting the quill.

Hi Nige,

You have of course to consider how you are going to move the work around?

You will need one of the two way x-y milling slides which are available on the internet good ones are not cheap.

What about the z feed up and down. If you only have a rack feed you will need to be able to lock the spindle for each cut. Does your drill have an alternative fine feed?

I would not say give up the idea but would endorse the view that a draw bar should be used. If your drill has a hollow spindle you could possibly fit one of the er collet chucks which have a threaded taper and make a simple draw bar to secure it in place.

hope this helps Geoff

Usually on a mill the entire spindle running all the way through the quill up to the pulley on the top is hollow- so to insert a milling chuck you push the chuck into the bottom on the quill as per the drill chuck, but then insert a long bolt through the top on the pulley, dropped down inside the quill which then screws into the end of the chuck taper... the drawbar can be a custom bolt, or long length of rod with a nut on the end.

Unless you have a hollow spindle on the drill press (unlikely) or fancy doing a complete conversion (article in a recent MEW I think I remember reading recently?) I suspect it may not be a great move to mill the steel for Harold Hall grinding rest (a good project, which I am currently making... all the milling is being done on my Super7 with a vertical slide)

geoff walker 1: Thanks, and X-Y table was tghe next thing if milling was going to happen on the pillar drill. Foe the time being I was going to raise and lower the drill table, it moves on a rack and pinion, as a crude Z feed and didn't plan on needing to cut in the Z plane.

RichardN: Thanks for the explanation of the drawbar, i Understand the setup now. Unlikely as existence of the hollow spindle on the pillar drill might be I will check it out, though I don't think I would go to the effort of converting it if it is not hollow. Looks like i might have to wait until I get the Myford ML4 is set up !

In the early days of my home workshop I tried to fit an X Y table and endmill holder to a drill press. The first one I tried would not cut steadily, even in aluminum with .005" cuts. The head would deflect to either side, or the column would deflect. I tried the setup in two progressively larger and more rigid drill presses with similar dismal results in all metals with known sharp cutters. Holding the cutter is actually the least of the problems milling with a drill press.

I realized far too late that drill presses are designed for rigidity in the direction of drilling ONLY. This they do very well. Milling involves forces to all sides and in the drilling direction and milling machines are designed to be rigid in all directions. Drill presses are just not designed to withstand the side forces and reactions of milling.

I would save up and buy a used mill if you want to do milling. I'm not a fan of the Sieg type mini mills but even one of those would be better for milling than a drill press. Sherline is one small mill that is cost effective (made with anodized aluminum slides and tables) and works well with light cuts. JD

Yeah I would agree a pillar drill is..well not really designed with milling in mind.(a pillar drill is absolute must for a workshop in my mind, but just not for cobbled together milling).

It's technically possible, but I would question whether it would get the accuracy needed even if you could get over the big deflections.

A lathe would be better suited, and would probably give you a better end product, you just have to think about the setups a bit more.

And own a milling slide of course. You could just use a machine vise with and angle plate and pack the work pieces to the right amount, but this is perhaps going too far. I bought a rigid vertical milling slide, simply incase my mill ever croaks it then I've still got an ace up my sleeve.

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 02/07/2017 21:11:39

Dont think a pillar drill is a good idea for milling. A draw bar seems to be a basic requirement,since milling cutters tend to work loose when cutting. Could end up as a sad story.

Ho Hum, looks like milling in the pillar drill is becoming less likely. I wasn't planning on purchasing a milling machine just yet so might have to bring forward the resurection of the ML4 and do the necessary to set that up for milling................it wouldn't hurt to just 'look' at milling machines though would it

A milling machine can do a good job of being a drill press. A drill press normally cannot function as a milling machine. Others have mentioned the need for a drawbar and, indeed, many of the small hobby type milling machines have a Morse taper spindle with a drawbar.

The problem with not having a drawbar to retain the chuck/collet/cutter etc. is that even low side forces on the tool's taper will gradually cause it to walk out of the spindle's taper. This gets aided and abetted by the milling cutter's flutes tending to pull the cutter into the work. It doesn't take very much of this, at all, before the tool falls out of the spindle. The results can be quite frightening (and that was machining wood!!). On a Morse taper, the tension on the drawbar can be surprisingly low for it to do it's job, but without that tension, all bets are off.

The best bet is to keep using the drill press for drilling, for the time being, and plan for a milling machine to turn up this Christmas if at all possible.

To get a tightly jammed morse taper chuck out of its socket without using any force you do a bit of side milling with it... and it drops right out all on its own after a minute or so

The drawbar system stops this from happening

Edited By Ady1 on 03/07/2017 00:28:04

And yet, I have a handful of old end mill cutters with No.2 Morse Taper shanks that have no threaded hole for a draw bar, just the usual tang for removal like a normal MT2 drill bit. They are part of my Dad's old kit so probably date back to WW2-ish or even earlier. Somebody, somewhere back then must have been using them without draw bars as they are quite blunt from use.

The americans worked this out years ago, essentially the spindle isn't stiff enough to resist sideways movement. A couple of solutions appeared in Popular Mechanics involving a stiffening arm attached to the pillar.

This is the earlier version: http://www.packratworkshop.com/pdf/drillpress-millmod.pdf

Best solution, augment the pillar drill with a vertical mill or mill/drill.

I would steer clear of using the drill as a 'mill' they're not built to take the side cutting forces, as said the cutting forces will tend to 'pull' the cutter out of the drill be it held in chuck or Morse taper...

ref. Edward's comment... 'Best solution, augment the pillar drill with a vertical mill or mill/drill.​'

George.

Most small hobby milling machines are frequently called mill-drills because they have the rigid requirements for milling as suggested in the previous posts. They also have reasonably good head room to allow drilling operations on the majority of jobs.

If budget is tight, get yourself a suitable milling machine and sell the pillar drill to offset the outlay. You can then use your newly acquired tool for its multiple intended uses.

Dave
The Emerald Isle