Aldi type bench drill

Good afternoon all, I have a question which I hope some of you will be able to help with.

I have an Aldi bench drilling machine with which I am quite happy except for one thing. I find there is a little vertical play in the quill which I find annoying..

What I want to know is, how do I go about removing the quill to see if I can fit a packing piece to take up the slack.

I have removed the pulley block and found a large circlip which seems to retain a bearing. Do I need to remove the return spring unit as well as the screw which engages with the groove in the right hand side of the quill, and then, what ?

Any advice ?

Thanks in advance because I know someone out there has the answer !

Hi Larry...

I can't give much advice about removing the quill but I had the same problem on a brand new larger drilling machine, there was about 1/4" play in the quill caused by the pinion gear being too far away from the rack, as you say it is really annoying!

I remember I had to take out the return spring and remove the pinion or else the quill will not move down as the rack gearing finishes at the top of the quill.

I thought of stuffing some thin shim material in between the rack & pinion as a quick fix, but I doubt it would have kept in place very long, I also considered making a larger pinion gear to solve the problem but to get an accurate measurement to make a new pinion and actually making it seemed a difficult proposition.

I took it all apart and machined the drill head casting making the pinion shaft bearing hole larger in order to fit an eccentric bush which I then set over to cause the pinion shaft to move closer to the rack and fitted a screw to lock in position. I used a flycutter to machine the larger hole.

The result is that the quill moves with no slack at all and gives the drill a much more sensitive feel about it.

Hope that hasn't put you off having a go, I found the machining of the cast iron was quite easy, cast iron is ok as long as you don't have to go through the tough outer cast layer... hope you do ok with it.

rgds..Bob.

There will always be backlash but you sound to have excess, reengineering the rack and pinion to some acceptable tolerance is probably the proper solution but a quick and dirty solution might be a gas strut to keep the quill in positive engagement with the pinion, it will lose some sensitivity but the assistance only needs to be the minimum to push the quill up.

Mike

My thanks to both of you for your time and interest.

As I said, the machine is quiet good considering the price I paid for it and it does, more or less what it says on the box, it*s just annoying. I use it mainly for drilling small holes about which I,m not too fussy. I do have a bigger Twain drill some 30 years old which is more or less dead on. It*s just that at times it is handy to have two drills up and running.

I will take another look at the problem and in the meantime, thank you both for your reply.

It*s the old story you get what you pay for !

Larry,......is this spare parts exloded view any use?

http://www.free-instruction-manuals.com/pdf/pa_821008.pdf

There have been two versions of the Aldi Chinese pillar drill, both similar but this is like the first model with rack and pinion table adjustment...it's extremely similar to the Aldi item.

A few years ago I had a similar drilling machine, with a similar fault. The was a good article in ME 19th May 1989 page 621. I followed the instruction and what a difference it made to the machine, well worth doing. If you have any problem send me a PM with your email address

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPOs92qQdZY