AmishWarlord

My Feedback: (5)

Anyone use these little milling attachments for drill presses? I saw one at Harbor Freight the other day and thought that it would be good for precision placement of the part to be drilled but I don't think it would be good to subject the drill press to actual milling.

bps

My Feedback: (3)

I have one. The problem with using it to mill is most drill presses are very loose and this creates a lot of chatter. These vises are not very precise either. General positioning or just getting it close might work though.

yel914

I have one also. My drill press is pretty accurate, but this milling vice is very inaccurate so the vice sits in the corner collecting dust. IMHO, save your money.

LesUyeda

I have one of those also. I tried to mill with it; ONCE only. It is great for holding things while you drill multiple holes in different locations, but that is about all. Right after I got that, I turned up a deal on a Sherling Lathe and Mill. Much more to my liking for small stuff.

Les

blikseme300

My Feedback: (118)

Harbor Freight and precision should never be used in the same sentence. Their stuff is OK if your tolerances are measured to the closest 1/8". Save your money.

CurtD

My Feedback: (1)

I have one of these and have used it with success.

If you're looking for high accuracy, this isn't the way to go but general/light milling definitely can be done with it, using a good drill press. The keys to success for me were these: First, I very carefully adjusted the milling vice to get the best movement and least amount of play. There are adjustment screws for this and the factory settings are no where near what they should be so you'll need to play with it to get it reasonably smooth and accurate. Second, I only use it for aluminum or wood, nothing any harder. Third, I take slow, light cuts. Don't try to take too much material too fast with it or chatter will ruin the piece. Use a good quality, sharp mill and cutting fluid with aluminum. Don't be surprised if it wears out the bearings in your drill press pretty rapidly. The aren't designed for side loads. Practise on a piece of scrap until you get to work for you.

dreadnaut

My Feedback: (5)

If you are careful, you can use it for drilling hole patterns within .010" tolerance with no problem. You want to be verry carefull about driving a milling cutter in a drill chuck. You could probably get away with a 1/8" cutter on wood or plastic. If you tried to run a 1/2" cutter through aluminum with a drill chuck, you could easily wind up with a cutter in your face and a ruined chuck.

BMatthews

I totally agree with everything written by CurtD and dreadnaut and with the warnings given by the rest of you.

I used my vise for doing some mortising in wood and did a couple of very light and small jobs on some aluminium parts. These sort of things were OK but it was clear that I was at the limit of the vise, drill press and ability to hold the cutters.

And I never really found that the vise worked all that well at just moving a part to line up the center mark with the drill bit. I'd rather just have a good sturdy regular drill press vise instead.

ron ward

the problem usually doesn't lie with the vice, most all of them have gibs that can be adjusted to give decent stability to do light duty milling of aluminum with light cuts. most drillpresses just aren't rigid enough for milling. the problem is that the colum and table brackets aren't made heavy enough to resist flexing when milling anything other than wood.

that said, i have that cross-slide on my drillpress right now and it can be used for light weight milling. you just have to fine tune the gibs to give a slightly tight sliding fit and then, the key word here is " light cuts" in both x and y passes. i use only a 1/4 inch dia. 4-lute end mill and have no problems with light cuts. on wood, i can hog away, but with alum. not much more than .010 depth and side cuts at a pass. and of course, you need to have a fairly heavy duty drillpress. with a small table, so the table arm isshort,and a large colum to minimize flex. i also rigged a dial indicator to the quill so that i can control depth of cut accuretly.
if you take the time and effort to set it all up properly, they will work for most of what our hobby requires, and a bit more, but don't expect them to aproach what even the lightest weight bench top drill/mill will do. i actually set the gibs up fairly tight and keep them and thier travel screws well lubed, as mentioned, keep the end mill small in diameter and the cuts light so that it has minimal time in the cut and you won't have too much flex. you'll have to make allot more passes, but so what.
i make a fair number of rifle stocks out of walnut and hard napleand the set-up works well enough to accurately "machine-inlet" an action to where it is ready for glass bedding as it comes off the "mill", if iam careful, take my timeand don't pushthe cuts too heavily. i actuallyhave a spread sheet of sorts that i developed over the years that lists the depths and side cutset-ups toinlet a typical mauser action. following it, i can let in an action in about 2 hours from a blank, well enough that the glassing is only.030 to .040 thick just about allover and scraping is just a few minutes worth here and there
again the secret is to keep the slidegibs set up almost "too tight", keep them well lubed, the cuts light and if you're looking to buy a press spend the extra few bucks and get one of the heavier ones on the display floor.

dadragon

mine went to the dump 2 weeks later.

box car

I got the small mill from HF on sale for $150 have not used my drill press in over a year.
Ken

Hydro Junkie

I lucked out in the same way as Les, fell into a Sears "Craftsman" badged Sherline mill and Sherline lathe. Even though the Sherline stuff is small and very wimpy in the HP department, it does the job much better than the HF cross vise or stock mill will. I bought one of the vises from HF as well and it's never been used in over 10 years

catspaw

Drill presses aren't meant for milling. As someone mentioned, it's not rigid enough. Drill presses and their bearings are not meant for side loads. You can get away with light milling of wood and may aluminum, but it won't be precise, and you'll just put extraordinary strain on your drill press. And as also has been mentioned, those vises suck at precision.

If you really need some model size machining done, go with the sherlines for quality.

dreadnaut

My Feedback: (5)

I lucked out too. Back in '95 a company I worked for was closing their machine shop to outsource, and I saved a perfectly good Clausing Mini-Mill w/full 3 axis table from the junkyard. I have a drill press too, for when I have a setup on the Clausing that I don't want to tear down just to drill a hole.

The company I currently work for has a Sherline CNC that we use on small plastic parts and prototypes. It would be nice, and more precise, if it had ball screws, but it works ok.