On a whim”’ I got a TOOL SHOP Junker Drill Press (You know the TALL one)..
Bit run-out was about .002 Inch.. For now! Kind of noisy but DRILLS pretty well!
I have some metal workin’ tools (Kind of old) but not any better for run-out…
My old metal working tools have BIG motors and the Electric gets a bit expensive!
Replies
Will George,
Your post raises an interesting point.
You're doing better with your "Junker Drill Press" than I am doing with my Grizzly 7943 12-speed drill press! Mine was crushed and missing parts, and it developed some wonderful new problems after light use.
Maybe you will end up throwing your drill press away after a year or so. Well, I will also be throwing my Grizzly 7943 drill press away after a year or so! In the end, I would have been better off with a "junker." At least that way I would have spent less money.
But mine has "Grizzly" stamped on it, so it will be a nice shade of green for the dumpster.
Edited 7/26/2005 10:58 pm ET by Matthew Schenker
Take that Grizzly badge and turn it into a belt buckle.....looks cool with boots and a 10 gallon hat.... 8-)
mikegagne,
You just gave me an idea...I just checked. The badge on my damaged Grizzly 7943 drill press can be popped off pretty easily. It's actually made of higher-grade material than the crushed cover.I've got two choices:1. Send it back to Grizzly (return shipping is cheap). It might be bent from removal, but I'm sure it will pass Grizzly's quality control and be aproved for use on another machine!2. Keep it on the machine. That way, people at the junkyard will see that it is a Grizzly saw in the dumpster.
Edited 7/27/2005 8:14 am ET by Matthew Schenker
Matt:
You are missing the obvious solution. Take the Grizzly name plate off your press, and get yourself a junker. Then paint the junker green, and put the Grizzly plate on. Voila. Repeat every year when you throw away the junker.
I bought a used Taiwan floor drill press. It was made 20 years ago and it does pretty good, despite having some teeth missing in the chuck and the table doesn't go up and down as well as it should. It works well enough for woodworking. In my shop about half my machines are china junk. The 10" planer I bought from Harbor Freight did ok for about 3 hours. Then it got warm enough for the grease to melt out of the bearings, flow down and get on the roller drive belt. The belt then melted. I'm supposed to be getting another belt but it hasn't arrived yet. My HF mortising machine actually works pretty good but setup is a pain. I got a 14x40 lathe from the same place to see if I could learn to turn wood. It works as it should but it doesn't take morse tapers so drilling is out of the question. If I could figure out what kind of thread is on the headstock I could mount a 4 jaw chuck on it. Two years ago I still believed in craftsman and bought a 13' planer. It took a crap after the warranty ran out. Woodtek sells the exact same thing for $400.
All my other power tools are really old craftsman (2 table saws,6x36 belt sander w/9" disk) and as they were built in the 60's they were built to last and do excellent work.
I would like to see every corporate bean counter who has confused quantity with quality standing in a breadline.
"I would like to see every corporate bean counter who has confused quantity with quality standing in a breadline."
Son, you're too easy on them ;-)
corporate bean counter .. I worked with one... He was yellin' at me for my trip expensies..I pulled his 'special keyboard' out of the back of his Puter...He never stopped typin'! LOL LOL
If you buy anything with a motor or more than 1-part from Harbor Freight you will never NEVER, never get the replacement parts. My band saw has broken parts that I have epoxied back together and I have been waiting 5-years for the parts to come in. I get messages from HF that the part I need is back ordered. Yeah, from Pluto!
To Jim. I've had pretty good luck with my Harbor Freight stuff. The first 10' planer I got arrived via UPS and looked like it fell out of an airplane. I got a return authorization and in about a month I had another planer. The belt burned up after the grease melted down onto the pulley. I called and they sent me a new belt in a week. Yesterday I ran some osage orange through it as a test and it came out pretty nice. I think if we realize the limitations of these imports we can get satisfactoy results. I don't believe that any of this stuff has a place in a production shop but for the stuff I do it is adequate.
...I would like to see every corporate bean counter who has confused quality with quantity standing in a breadline "
Off the cuff, I reckon the bread would run out.Since they would be in a straight line it may be preferable to shoot them.
Dangeeit-this has basically already been said....Edited 7/29/2005 5:02 am ET by Philip Marcou
Edited 7/29/2005 5:06 am ET by Philip Marcou
Can we expand that to include shooting MBA's, lawyers etc.?
Edited 7/29/2005 11:58 am ET by Gnome
Hey guys,
Just a question here.I'm gathering from this thread that people are not too impressed with Grizzly machines. On some of the other sites people talk about Grizzly as if they were the second comming.
I'm in Canada, and since Grizzly won't sell here, I have no first hand experience with their product.
So, the question............is Grizzly a quality product or a cheap alternative to good quality?
Brent
Just a question here.I'm gathering from this thread that people are not too impressed with Grizzly machines.
No, just Matt. Do a search; he's been talking about this drill press for quite some time. I gather it arrived with some damage; a claim with the shipper wasn't filed. He agreed to just get sent the replacement parts, but then decided he didn't want to put them on. I don't think he filed a dispute with the CC company.
Apparently it has now developed some other issues, but a warranty claim has not been pursued, as far as I know.
All in all, it's my impression the whole machinery-mail-order thing doesn't suit him.
Shop Fox is available in Canada, isn't it? Same stuff, different paint job, available retail, longer warranty, more expensive.
Brent,
The answer to this appears highly dependent on the specific model of Grizzly machine and perhaps even the expectations of the purchaser. Clearly, some are very satisfied with Grizzly and others are not. This is also true for other makes of machinery. I have 3 Grizzly machines (drill press, edge sander, and oscillating spindle sander). I had to fix all three of them right out of the box and the fit and finish has been poor on all except the drill press. The coupling on the oscillating spindle sander fell apart during the first minute of use. I have been successful at getting them all fully functional although the drill press leaves a lot to be desired (too much slop in the bearings). I suppose I got what I paid for so I don't really have a lot of room to complain however, it is an irritant to me to have to fix any new machine right out of the box regardless of what I paid for it.
Steve
Steve
How is that Grizzley edge sander? I am looking at one...may buy one. I have several Grizzley machines. had good luck with all. I ll take that back, I purchaced the 3 hp shaper ,back when Grizzley first started to send out catalogs maybe 15 or 20 years ago. the fence was screwed up. i could not get the two halves parrell with each other. They sent me a new fence.
My brother used to work for a G.M.dealership for years He said they even made Caddies . that were all screwed up. Maybe they were built on Monday when lots of workers were hurting from the weekend. LOL
PLease excuse misspelled words.
Have a nice day Lee.
Lee,
I have the 6X80" floor edge sander which is OK but not great. Fit, finish and paint job is pretty lousy. It tracks reasonably well. I took off the worthless little table on the idle roller as the vibration always caused it to come loose regardless of how tight the thumbscrew was. I built a laminated table that goes around that end now so I have much more surface area but this means that I can't pivot the belt to the horizontal position. This isn't a big deal for me since I never used it horizontally anyway. One word of advice on edge sanders, decide in advance what length of work you want to edge sand and be sure to get a platen large enough. I am looking to upgrade to a larger oscillating edge sander next year so will probably put this on ebay when the time comes.
Steve
Brent, Grizzly is a large company selling alot of machines. You should judge by the eaches of their machines. There are the naysayers in this forum that hate them but I find this to silliness largely (tool envy maybe) and not because I own their machines, I dont. I have friends who have some of their stuff and mostly its good. I own old American machines mostly because I am also (old and American). I recommend you do your research and buy what will fit the bill for you whatever brand it is. The tool world has changed and we need to move on and help each other to determine what is really worth our effort now. Good luck in your search and may you end up with machines that will thrill and outlast you. aloha, mike
Thanks guys for the responces. It does seem that Grizzly quality varies from machine to machine, and person to person.
Does anyone know if they have their own quality control personal in the manufacturing plants or not? Do they have an R&D team or just buying what's offered to them from the Asian market? How are they at after sales service and parts supply?
I'm not asking as a potential customer, just curious about peoples evaluation of the company and their products. I was lucky enough to buy all my machinery long enough ago to have all American made Delta and Canadian made General, both of which on the very few occasions I needed service and/or parts were readily available.
Brent
Brent.. while grizzly may not be available here, Busy Bee sells equivalent off shore product.
They been in business for more than 20 years now. Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, and probably Winnipeg and a coupla places in the maritimes. It's not top of the line stuff, but I've been dealing with em since they opened up in Burnaby. They are a reputible company.
I dunno if they've gone chinese with mfging, but they certainly lived through the phase when all the tiawanese castings warped etc cause they were milled "green" They also sell a lot of machine tools, milling machines, lathes etc, so they got some comprehension of precision.
Prices are OK for what you get. Pay more, get more, pay less, get less. You know the story.
Eric
in Calgary
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