Pollard bench drill refurb

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Paint is all done now, will start reassembling tomorrow. In the meantime I thought I'd to a test run for the spindle threading.
View attachment 185786
For some reason I ground my 60 degree threading tool the wrong way so it can't get tight up to a face. Time to drag out my big grinder and grind a new tool.
View attachment 185785
You can see how much use it gets. Its perfect for grinding lathe tools but it's very slow going to I usually use my much faster bench grinder. I may refurb this too eventually.

No pictures of the paint.
How'd the second coat come out.

 

[Maker]

I wasn't happy with the second coat so its had three now.

Can't wait to get it back together, its taking up more than it's fair share of space at the moment.

 

[Maker]

Done-ish.

Looks good but absolutely wasn't worth the time, money or effort.

Still need to machine the spindle, clean the table, find screws for the back cover, fix, paint, assemble and fit a motor, buy a belt, make a new switch plate and machine a couple of washers and pins.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Looks smart.
Always enjoy doing myself.

 

[Maker]

I like the mechanical restoration of it, the jobs I've got left will be fun but the days of cleaning, filling, sanding and painting just feel wasted.

 

[Maker]

I cut a test in a bit of steel to check I was measuring/cutting the thread and register right:

Spurred on by that success I drilled a 10.5mm hole in another chunk, reduced the spindle taper until it just didn't fit, then heated the blank to 300ish degrees and pressed the spindle in. That would probably have been plenty but just for good measure, against my better judgement I welded the end up, probably put 160 amps into it for about a minute but it still cracked a little bit. Is there a trick to machining weld? I've never had any luck with it, it always seems to behave like it's rock hard and deflect the tool. Strange because it files just fine so it can't be that hard.




Tool held in the rear toolpost because it's stiffer, I can clearly see the benefit of a solid toolpost mount like Robin Renzetti and Stefan Gotteswinter use, I'll need more toolholders before it can work for me but I'm definitely thinking about it. I actually got a better finish after I took the pictures using a HSS bit ground really sharp with no corner radius.

 

[Maker]

There was no getting a center drill in it, way too hard, so I just held it in the four jaw, dialled in to within a tenth of runout on the bearing journal. I had wanted to hold it at the far end and support it with the tailstock to make sure the shaft was straight relative to the machine spindle but this looked good enough, the other end of she shaft looked nice and central in the headstock bore, no more than five thou runout over it's 23 inch length. Another option would have been to use a fixed steady but it would have made for awkward indicating.


The finish on the thread isn't great (It never is, not sure what I'm doing wrong) but the picture makes it look worse than it is. That cover plate needed boring to fit the bigger nose diameter too.

All fitted, looks pretty good.

It doesn't seem to be sitting perfectly straight unfortunately, I think it's better than the old chuck but it's not ideal. I'll get it running before I can figure out where the error is coming from and sort it.

New bearings for the motor came this morning, just need to clean, paint and assemble it.

 

[Maker]

Nearly a year on, I know you're all eagerly awaiting an update on this...

The motor is still in bits, I've lost the end castings and I have no idea where those new bearings are, don't even remember buying them. The drill is now where I store my planer shavings.

I'll try to finish it this summer, honest.

 

[God mode restorations]

Nearly a year on, I know you're all eagerly awaiting an update on this...
View attachment 242699
The motor is still in bits, I've lost the end castings and I have no idea where those new bearings are, don't even remember buying them. The drill is now where I store my planer shavings.

I'll try to finish it this summer, honest.

Drill looks nice. Stuff takes time.

 

[Maker]

Cheers, means a lot from you.

 

[Maker]

That's one coat, hopefully one more before I go to bed and I can assemble it in the morning. Very fiddly getting in all the cooling holes on those end plates.

 

[Maker]

Second coat of paint looked good enough so I put it together, pressed the new bearings on, wired it up and it ran fine but the shaft had a lot of end play, turns out I'd missed a couple of washers behind the bearings so off they come...

 

[Maker]

The motor is fitted, temporarily wired in with a bit of 4 core flex and I couldn't resist making a duct tape belt to test it. I'll order a proper one when I figure out what belt the little Herbet drill next to it needs. I also need some small machine screws for the cover plates and some switchgear, right now I plug it into my inverter and use the controller on my lathe to turn it on, not the most ideal (or safe ) setup.

 

[Maker]

Now the big drill is done (Mostly ) I'm showing the smaller one a bit of love, it's getting a nice Albrecht keyless chuck to match the big one. The drill spindle is threaded and the chuck I've got has a taper, which means the spindle needs to come out.


Notice the bearings are doubled up, a metal shielded one on the end and a rubber sealed one behind it. At the top of the spindle there's two more, a shielded and an open one. They were preloaded with that greasy spring, I didn't know it was there so when I gave the bearings a tap they launched out, luckily not onto the floor but I'm not sure exactly where the spacers go in relation to them.


One nice clean spindle. I cleaned all the nasty old grease out the rest of the quill and reassembled it minus the spindle to keep it all safe.

I'll loctite a piece of steel to the spindle and turn a taper on it between centres, need to buy a 3/8"-24 tap and a DTI to clock in the compound slide first though.

 

[God mode restorations]

Now the big drill is done (Mostly ) I'm showing the smaller one a bit of love, it's getting a nice Albrecht keyless chuck to match the big one. The drill spindle is threaded and the chuck I've got has a taper, which means the spindle needs to come out.
View attachment 243645
View attachment 243646
Notice the bearings are doubled up, a metal shielded one on the end and a rubber sealed one behind it. At the top of the spindle there's two more, a shielded and an open one. They were preloaded with that greasy spring, I didn't know it was there so when I gave the bearings a tap they launched out, luckily not onto the floor but I'm not sure exactly where the spacers go in relation to them.

View attachment 243647
One nice clean spindle. I cleaned all the nasty old grease out the rest of the quill and reassembled it minus the spindle to keep it all safe.

I'll loctite a piece of steel to the spindle and turn a taper on it between centres, need to buy a 3/8"-24 tap and a DTI to clock in the compound slide first though.

I have a drill similar. I like the star handle on top of yours.

 

[Maker]

The handle is attached to an ACME thread in the top of the column and moved the head up and down, very nice arrangement. Is yours a Herbert? If so, I'd love to see the pulley arrangement on yours, I've always wondered how this speed plate works.

The spindle has a two step pulley, about 3/4" and 1", which I'm pretty sure is original but I'm not certain what the A, B and C refer to. My best guess is it had three interchangeable pulleys to fit the motor, roughly 5", 2.5" and 1.25". There's a plate on top of the belt guard, behind the star handle, which says "Bolt in motor has left hand thread" and the bolt itself is stamped "LH" which would seem to suggest they expect the bolt to be regularly removed in normal operation. There's not enough motor travel to use the same belt on all three pulley sizes so there must be three belts too.

When I got it the belt was running directly on the motor shaft giving a spindle speed of around seven or eight hundred RPM, far to slow for such a little drill so I machined a 5 ish inch pulley, I can slow it down with an inverter. I should probably look for a smaller chuck, mine is 5/16" capacity but I'm pretty sure Albrecht made a 1/4" or even a 1/8" which would be better suited for the spindle speed.

 

[Maker]

New belts came today, the Pollard is up and running.


Stepped pulleys give me 3000, 1700 and 500 RPM but as it's three phase from an inverter, I can have any speed between them and right down to 50 RPM (Though probably not with enough torque to do anything useful ). I was expecting the speeds to come out as half the listed speeds (4 pole motor) but the slowest is miles off so it's presumably not the original pulley, not complaining too much though.

Of course I had to ruin a chunk of steel.

I chucked up an endmill shank to measure the runout; 0.11mm which looked really bad on my shiny new indicator but it's only 4 thou so I think I can live with that, maybe I'll look into lapping the threads or something if it bothers me.

Got a belt for the Herbert too, big enough to get around the 5 inch plastic pulley I made so that's 9000 and 6500 rpm sorted, if I make a new, smaller pulley I'll have to get a shorter belt or make some kind idler wheel to fit in there too but that won't be any time soon, I'd like to remake that pulley from steel too at some point (As if the drill isn't already heavy enough ).

 

[Maker]

Would you believe I got the compound angle spot on first try?

Excuse the makeshift drive dog. I had a test bar which seemed to fit and checking it with blue it showed it contacting all the way down, I wondered if it's some error in my method but the chuck hasn't fallen off so it must have been blind luck. Quite happy with how it came out.

A bit noisy at 9000 rpm but it does a nice job with a 1.4mm drill bit.

Now just need to sort out switches and a smaller vice.

 

[HughF]

How did I miss this thread, I have the same drill. I started my 'freshen up' about 6 years ago - still not finished it...

Lovely drills though

 

[MinerChris]

Hi Maker,

Both of your drills are looking very smart after the work that you've been doing on them.

I've just picked up a Herbert Type B myself and am currently in the process of stripping the grot and grease off the outside and internal gubbins. I think that you are right that A B C speeds refer to three different sized pulleys, of which mine came with the largest.

Herbert Tooling has quoted me for replacement 2 pulleys (medium and small) and the 3x drive belts from the original spares list, but I might wait to see if I can pick up another of these drills off ebay instead to source the different pulleys and a few other odds and sods that are broken.

I'd be interested in finding out what your drill is motored with, as the speeds on your plates seem to be half the speeds that are quoted on mine. The motor on mine is a 1/3hp, 2840rpm 3phase, that I'm probably going to try to remotor eventually.

Best Regards,

Chris.