Drill Spindles, anyone?

[sbmathias]

I want to make a specialized drilling machine. I need a quick and easy way to come up with four drill spindles that I can easily mount on a platform, which I can then drive into the work. I'm told that I can't just thread a motor shaft and screw on a chuck, as most motors don't handle thrust very well.

I've thought about repurposing a hand electric drill, but they are very hard to mount in a machine. I even considered taking the guts out of one and building a housing which I could readily bolt to a mounting plate, but that is hardly quick and easy.

There are drill spindles on the market, but they approach $1000 each for a chuck, axle with bearings, and motor.

Does anyone have any obvious ideas I must have overlooked? I'll be drilling 1/2" holes in copper water pipe. Will use standard drill, end mill, or maybe annular cutter.

[mattm]

I guess you could buy 4 HF bench drill presses and pull the spindles. You would then need to rig up the motors from the presses to drive the spindles. But for $70 x 4 you could have your spindles and motors.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=38119

[sbmathias]

Yeah, I thought about doing that, but I'd have to build bearing housings and such, which might not be too bad. I'd like something self-powered, if possible.

I also thought about tearing apart a gang-drill for drilling several holes at once. Seems like those should have bearing assemblies that might be easily repurposed. Would still have to drive them, but that might be easy.

[pcarpenter]

I am guessing that when Matt was recommending stealing the spindles from HF drill presses, that he actually meant stealing the quill out of them...this means the bearing housing, bearings and the spindle inside. The only thing you would have to fabricate is the means to hold the quills in place. In a standard drill press they are driven downward using a rack cut on the back of the quill. It sounds like in your case that the whole fixture that holds the quills will move if I am reading your description correctly.

Paul

[snowman]

http://www.hgrindustrialsurplus.com/...entPageIndex=0

Where do you live?

[mattm]

Paul is right. I meant to say quill.

[Flying-Phantom]

Where I use to work we used a self contained air drill. It mounted with four bolts and had a one half inch chuck. With the touch of a start button It would start turning and then drive the bit to whatever depth you adjusted it to. I believe the max depth was around four inches. I am sorry I don't remember the manufacturer (its been a few years ago). I also remember they had different sized machines.

[JCHannum]

ARO makes the self feeding air spindles, they turn up on eBay from time to time at affordable prices, I sold a few earlier this year.

There are also multiple spindle drilling attachments that are mounted on a common drill press that show up from time to time at reasonable prices. Procunier is one manufacturer of these.

http://www.procunier.com/k.html

[moldmonkey]

Here's something close to what Flying-Phantom is talking about. At the last job, we had something similar with 3 spindles in one unit but apparently you have a low budget.

How about straight-line air drill motors using Rota-cut cutters. I know they work well in sheet-metal. I don't know how well they would work cross-drilling tubing.

[wierdscience]

I built one for a buddy a few years ago for drilling shelf peg holes in cabinet carcasses-



Just an aluminum housing I milled up,drilled and reamed for bushings and ball thrust bearings.I used stock gears that yielded the 1" center distance.Each other spindle runs reverse of the one next to it,so for 15 spindles there are 8RH and 7LH bits being used.

You wouldn't have to run gears,it could be cog belts or even roller chains if the system is designed right.

The head I build used fixed center distances,adjustable centers can be done,it just requires more parts.