Originally, drill presses were designed for metalworking but the drill press quickly became popular in woodworking shops as well. It is the right tool for precision drilling. Nowadays, you can find good drill presses which are cheap enough for hobby use as well. The drill press can be used for more than drilling holes, you can without much trouble turn it into a sander or mortiser.
Drill presses are rated in inches. This tells you the distance from the center of the chuck to the column. In essence, this determines the widest work piece the machine can handle. Drill presses support variable speeds. Most drill presses have a handle that allows you to change the speed. On cheaper models, you generally change the speed by shifting a belt. In most cases, three pulleys are used, the motor pulley, the jackshaft pulley and the spindle pulley. The motor pulley is driven directly by the motor while the spindle pulley turns the spindle. The jackshaft pulley sits in the middle and increases the range of speeds.
The two main types of drill presses are the floor model and the bench model. They have the same basic design, a base supports a steel column which serves as a backbone and support the table and the motor. The motor drives a spindle which is attached to a chuck. Most drill presses aimed for home workshops are in the 11 to 16 inch range. Typically, they have a 0.5 or 0.75 horsepower motor.
The table can be raised and lowered to accommodate for work pieces of different sizes. Most tables can be tilted up to 45 degrees, making it possible to bore angled holes. The drill press allows you to drill more accurately, in regards to both the location and the orientation of the hole, than is possible with a handheld drill. If you are going to do precision drilling, you need to use a drill press rather than a handheld drill.
Like handheld electric drills, drill presses need very little maintenance. But some models tend to slip out of alignment. The chunk and the table create the most the problems. The most common problem is that the table is not square to the spindle. Fortunately, this is easy to fix.
Vibration is another common problem, especially with low quality drill presses. Vibrations can be caused by a number of components. First you need to find the cause of the vibration. The motor and the pulley, together with the belt, are the sources of most vibration problems.
Runouts are generally caused by the spindle or the chuck. To solve this you need to remove the chuck. If the problem is the chuck, it needs to be replaced. While handheld drills often have keyless chucks, drill presses still use a chuck key. If you are going to drill in large samples, it’s worth investing in a good drill press table.