BenchTop Drill Press
Probably the first thing we should ask is “Why do I need a bench top drill press when I have a reversible drill”?
A bench top drill press will give you much higher quality and repeatability than any drill can. Even the most powerful hand drill can’t come close to matching the torque available from even the smallest bench top drill press. These small drill presses are small enough to work in any shop and once you have one, you will wonder how you ever got along without it in the first place.
In any woodworking or metal shop there are always innovations in many of the machines. Better safety guards, more power, more accessories, etc. The lonely drill press just sets in the corner ready to do basically the same job drill presses have done since they were invented. Well, for me I occasionally use a sanding drum on mine so it’s not quite what the original inventors had in mind. But other than that, it is designed to do only one thing, and that is to make consistent holes in some material.
Add a table with some adjustable fences and the accuracy and consistent repeatability will amaze you. You can buy tables for these little guys but if you are reasonably handy it’s pretty darn easy to make your own drill press table.
If you have a large shop and/or work on lager pieces then you may need a floor standing drill press instead of the benchtop drill press. For me, I have both. Not because the bench top unit couldn’t do the job, it was just that the space on my bench was more valuable than the floor space. So I bought a free standing drill press too.
A good quality bench top drill press will cost you less than $200. Which is probably less than you paid for your fancy 12 rechargeable drill package.
When looking to buy a bench top drill press there are few things you should consider (along with the price of course).
Amperage – I’m not a big fan of using amperage to measure power since it does not take efficiency into consideration but that hasn’t stopped the manufacturers from using it. For the most part, the higher the amperage rating the more powerful the machine.
Speeds - Don’t be mislead by seeing ‘variable spped’. That only means it’s capable of more than one speed. Some units are continuously variable speed and others can vary the speed but require you to move the belts to two different size pulleys. If you always have to drill through the exact same material then variable speed may not be important. But for me I have to adjust the drill speed a lot due to having to make holes in a variety of materials and thicknesses. So a continuously variable speed model is great for me. Fumbling with the pulleys is a pain.
Vertical Capacity – is the distance from the quill to the top of the table at it’s lowest position. Don’t be mislead. It is NOT the thickness of the material that can be placed on the table and drilled. You have to deduct the length of the drill bit from the Vertical Capacity to actually know the maximum thickness of the material.
Table Size - I only mention this because it’s a common stat used by manufacturers to tout their wears. If you are the lest bit handy you can build a larger table to add a lot of capacity and versatility to your machine.
Buy one of these and you will never regret it. Every decent shop should have a benchtop drill press.
