| 25947.1 | |
| Hello All, It seems I have a bit of a problem with my General 75-200 drill press. When drilling relatively large holes (particularly half inch or larger with brad point or forstner/symptoms bits) and sometimes even fairly small holes (mostly in hard wood like beech and hard maple), the chuck has a tendency to drop off the spindle/shaft. It has done this virtually since the day I bought the drill press. Other symptoms include a loud squealing noise just before the chuck stops turning. If I back off quickly enough the noise will stop and the bit will continue drilling with light pressure, but eventually it sticks again (usually quite soon after) and most of the time drops off the spindle despite feeling quite snug when first installed. I have tried thoroughly cleaning off the spindle and the inside of the chuck to ensure no dust or grease/oil, etc. is interfering with having the chuck seat properly on the spindle but this doesn’t seem to help. I have noticed that with time, a shinier ring roughly 1/32 of an inch or so wide has appeared around the spindle indicating some very slight wear, I believe. Is my chuck or spindle “toast” and in need of replacement, or is there something I can do to resolve this problem without resorting to parts replacement. Any insights would be greatly appreciated as I am in the middle of building my “dream” workbench and was just about to start drilling all the bench dog holes in the top when this problem became worse (so now I’m stuck for the time being unless I can come up with a way of drilling these holes very accurately by hand…not a likely prospect). Thanks very much in advance!! Dru Dron |
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Replies
Hi DruDron ,
Most drill press chucks have a Morse taper where they fit into the quill bottom , it is most likely either a # 1 or the # 2 . I have a drill press that every now and then used to also drop the chuck . Try to blow out and wipe clean both ends and remove any bit , open up the jaws a bit and I used a rubber mallet to seat it home ,after swinging the table out of the way I gave it a hard rap up to seat it , give it a try . You may take a block of wood and a real hammer to deliver the blow with also .
good luck dusty
Dru,
That shiney area you see is where the tapers are meeting-if taken to extreme it would be the whole length of the taper.
Assuming everything is clean I suggest you take some fine abrasive compound, like valve grinding paste, and rotate the chuck by hand back and forth on the taper to seat it better-stop when the shiney area has gone, and you are just on the verge of abrading the whole length of the taper. Then clean all abrasive , apply a suspicion of light oil, and using a wood block on the opened chuck for protection, give it a firm whack or two with a heavy mallett.The chuck must be fully open so that the jaws are out of the way. If all is well that chuck should never drop off-in fact it should be quite dificult to prise off.
You should also check to see if there is a retaining /safety screw that would normally lock the chuck to the spindle.
The squealing etc you hear is due to the fact that the chuck is coming loose on the spindle , vibrating and out of true. Also, Forstners like to do that anyway-it is better to keep them in the hole until they stop after you switch off.
DruDron,
Take it back...ain't your problem. You can try swapping out chucks, might fix it, but if not...you realy don't have any other options.
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