Looks Beautiful fitted to an Atlas drill press. they compliment each other. the vise jaws are a plus cause like you said they are always missing!. A few months back I picked up a craftsman X-Y table with rotary capability, round table ontop with a 3rd crank handle to rotate it to any degree. I was quick to get it off a drill press at an estate sale and add to the pile I had. went home and researched it and found out it had the same looking vise jaws like the atlas here. went to the sale next day (Sunday) and searched for the jaws, found one right away on the drill press table, the other was hidden by all the stuff that was on the floor. got to clean it and use it. Its a great tool for precision work and quick work.
The X Y table shown here is indeed very nice and an enviable accessory to have. I, too, own one, complete with jaws. I lucked out and swapped an old 22 rifle that I believed was of about the same value as the table for the one i have. I think over time, the value of the table will outpace the value of the gun I traded for mine. Mention was made of how costly these tables have gotten over the last few years. The rotary table you mentioned buying is even costlier and more highly prized than these XY tables like the one seen here!
right! Last yr at a church rummage sale I was able to pickup brand new vise jaws for my craftsman XY rotary table! It was in its original box too! I got it for $5! I know I have the 2 that came with the table but having now, 4 is better as one can clamp a piece from all 4 sides.@@herbholmberg4474
Hi -- Thanks for the comments. The vise in the video has been out of production for decades so you'll only find them on the used market. You can probably find newer versions from China though.
@@MrHarvard88I think the man was referring to the import milling tables like I commonly see sold on Ebay. As you previously explained to another comment or question made above equipping a drill press like this with a mini version of a milling machine table (considerably wider than an XY table and having handwheels on each end like a mill table would be a HUGE error in judgement and would very much invite abuse and damage to a drill press.
Great question. I should have been more specific in my explanation. I think the compound vise would work fine for milling on an actual milling machine. But I don't plan to use it for milling in my drill press and that has less to do with the vise and more to do with the drill press. I don't think the quill and bearings in my drill press are really designed for heavy side loads that you experience when milling. It would probably work for shallow cuts in aluminum or brass, but steel would be more difficult.
I agree with the comments regarding using the drill for milling in steel and will add to his comments. As noted, the drill press was not designed for use as a mill due to the aforementioned side loading issue of the quill. If pressed into heavy use milling steel in particular, it would not take long to trash the quill bearings, top and bottom in particular. However, if the user is careful and keeps this in mind, lighter materials like brass and aluminum (also noted) are not nearly as punishing to the bearings if machined. Also, as previously noted, milder grades of steel as well can be machined/milled using this setup, when doing this (again as previously stated), only very light cuts should be attempted, making many more passes than would be required to accomplish the same end results as would be accomplished on a mill, but with half the passes needed to achieve the same results. My dad was a man of limited means, so often things were done on machines in his shop that he knew were less than ideal. Pop knew exactly what kind of damage milling steel on his drill press in a cross vise would do to his machine. Dad explained the issue and potential equipment damages to me that would occur if he tried to treat his drill press like a milling machine. That said, occasionally and only in rare instances, he did mill slots in steel on his machine. When dad did mill steel on his drill press, it was slow and tedious at best. Many shallow cuts using very slow feed rates of the adjustment on the XY table got him the final result of a slot in a piece of steel, but it took a lot of patience and was very slow going to achieve his final result. I only saw dad use his machine in that inadvisable way just a handful of times through the years and don't believe his drill press suffered by his actions. I doubt many guys would have had the patience to mill a slot in a piece of steel like dad did. I now have his drill in my own shop, and as far as I have been able to determine his rare and cautious abuse of his machine does not appear years later to have resulted in any noticeable impairment to the machines accuracy or performance. After stating the above I will add that my dad considered milling steel in particular on a drill press an abuse of the machine and its quill and bearings.
