Drill press table adjustment - table seems to be 'drooping'!

[Cret]

Must admit that I was under the impression that:
A) Clarke and Sealey stuff is basically the same stuff rebadged (plus a lot of Draper from what I can see, and even other brands with certain tools)
B) That they were all made in China

The sealey site shows the list price as £954 for this drill press but of course I think you'd be mad to pay that. Most places flogging it are more like half that cost, and as I say I was lucky enough to pick it up for something like £100 or £150. I forget as it was a while ago now but it was a steal.

I know of course it won't have the same build quality as a lot of other machines but for what it cost me, it's a lot of drill press for the money, and now that I've spent time tweaking it with the dial gauge extended off an arm in the chuck (to reach the table edges) it's down to a few thou from perfect, and I can live with that!! If I need greater precision drilling then yeah, I'd probably rig something up on the lathe (again, a chinese machine - Sieg C3).

I'd love to get some of the older british built stuff but being on the Isle of Man you never see it locally for sale, and I can't just hop in the car to go and get something from ebay. Well, not without adding a few hundred quid to the cost thanks to the ferry etc.

 

[Pete.]

The guys at work threw a floor-standing Meddings in the skip earlier this year when they were having a clear-out. Scrap was rock-bottom at the time, I did call them a few names and then pointed out that the drill they had smashed was worth more than the whole 20yd bin of iron.

 

[Cret]

 

[Cret]

Ha ha - all very valid points, and certainly with the mill & lathe I've got I've had to do improvements to them to make them half decent (for my needs anyway).

The table on mine has a rounded edge at the back of it but square edges on the other 3 sides. The rounded bit allows to rotate almost fully round each way but not quite. I don't think I really have an issue though now as I say after spending a bit of time on it. The problem with shimming it potentially is that the table sits into the arm that holds it by virtue of a tube section, so adding any shim where it sits would just raise the whole table as it would lift the tube stub within the arm (if you picture what I mean). But I've got it so close as to no longer be an issue I think. Need to make some wood blank the same sizes as I normally use, stick them in the vise and drill them through to see if they come out nice and straight now.

 

[rtbcomp]

... so adding any shim where it sits would just raise the whole table as it would lift the tube stub within the arm...

You could put the shim on one side of the mounting to tilt the table

 

[Cret]

I think the only way you could do that would be to add it to the part where the supporting arm joins the column, and because of the pivot factor of the arm being like a lever, even a 1thou shim would tilt the table way more than that (I think) so would probably make it worse. But adding any under the table regardless of which side will just raise the whole table by that amount as it's held by a tube mounted in another tube.

 

[rtbcomp]

Depends on the fit between the two tubes, I bet there would be enough slack (even if you can hardly feel it) to tilt the table slightly. Worth a try to make sure, but TBH I'd go for the supporting jack method, I use a car scissor jack to raise & lower the table on my Progress drill.

 

[Mr shiney]

I'd shim the vice....

 

[Mee]

If its a Sealey they (from memory) have an adjusting screw which is a small allen grub screw.

Did a mates a few years ago and I took his table and put it in the lathe, I turned a bar down to clamp the table too and set it on the centres with the bore dead square, the face of the table was measured and was nearly 1mm off centre and about as flat as a Michelin mans belly, took three facing cuts to get it flat and square, but at least the table was at 90 degrees to the axis and flat, he fine tuned it using an allen key in the grub screw.