Drill chuck arbors

[mklotz]

When Cecil, my mill-drill, is not set up for milling the spindle is mounted with the Albrecht chuck on an R8 arbor so that it can be used as a drill press on steroids.

When it is set up for milling an ER32 collet chuck is mounted. Handy for holding endmills but, if I want to drill a quick hole it's a pain to demount the collet chuck, mount the Albrecht, drill, and then reverse the procedure to get back to milling. The Albrecht chuck is a bit long so this generally means raising the mill head which means loss of registration on a round column mill.

To avoid this inconvenience I bought a nice 1/4" Jacobs chuck and made a 1/2" diameter straight arbor with a 3/8-24 thread to match the chuck. Most of the time the 1/2" collet is in the collet chuck so this arbor can be plugged in directly and holes drilled.

Wouldn't you just know that the first hole I needed to drill was 5/16"? So I acquired a 1/2" Jacobs chuck and made a 1/2" arbor with a 1/2"-20 thread. Now I can handle any drill up to 1/2".

[wizard69]

Nice work Marv.

In case anybody else is considering the same thing ( a very good idea) keep the arbor end short enough for proper engagement in your collet system and no longer. The reasoning is that an excessively long arbor makes it difficult to swap with other devices. I mention this because commercial straight taper arbors are often far longer than need.

[rossbotics]

I know what you mean about those round column mill drills, they are a great machine until you have to raise the head to change tools, loosing registration is very frustrating and requires a little reset up work after, I bought one of those machines when I started my business 30 years ago just for small parts if my big mill was tied up, soon to find out it was a real pain in the azz, didn't take me to long to get rid of it.

you did a good job addressing your problem

Doug

[mklotz]

The round column problem isn't that big a problem for me. I've learned to plan tooling head changes well ahead to minimize the number of times the machine head must be moved. I don't have the room for a mill with a knee but a square column would be nice.

The most important advice I would give to anyone with a round column mill is to buy a set of screw-machine length drills.

[DIYer]

Thanks mklotz! We've added your Drill Chuck Arbors to our Machining category,
as well as to your builder page: mklotz's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Drill Chuck Arbors by mklotz

tags: chuck, arbor