DIY PCB drill press

[theehman]

http://joshashby.com/blog/2010/03/drill-press/

Looks simple enough and cool as heck!

[caskwith]

I'm having trouble finding a 'metal drill press with no slop', I thought about creating my own One that I can guarantee has no slop (being adjustable) and can have fittings made specifically for different tools - as well as extras like lighting, and a acrylic overlay with reticle for 'aiming'. Sounds ambitioius, and perhaps over kill, but all the above is usually on commercial PCB drill systems design to be used manually. Its just as much a hobby project as a 'useful bit of kit'. In the meantime I will still search for the best presses, currently looking for the old minicraft model.

[mark2]

I inherited an old Craftsman bench top press that you secure a hand drill into, and it's surprisingly stable and smooth: https://imgur.com/a/S7bJ3NL

A quick search shows you can find them for dirt cheap on various classifieds sites. If you're interested try searching offerup/craigslist/ebay, etc.

[R.G.]

I messed with almost every possible drill press type before I gave up on make-do solutions and bought a jeweler's drill press. Mine cost $160, years ago. I haven't checked recently, but I'm guessing they're about $200-250 now. Expensive, but only about one commercial pedal. And it saved me a huge amount of time. These have unmeasurably small wobble and play, and can do the high speeds that make carbide bits a thing of wonder.

Another thing that made a great improvement in PCB drilling was to invert the drill press so that it drilled UP from the bottom of the board and make some kind of optical sight on the top to locate the hole. I used a cheap (US$10) rifle scope, tinkered to focus to 2" by extending the tube. This gave me a 5x magnified cross hair image at the PCB surface level. I adjusted the crosshairs to the center of the point of the drill bit. With this in place, and a PCB on the drill plate, moving the PCB to put a pad centered in the crosshairs and activating the press, the bit drilled up through the board and came out where the crosshairs pointed. Rigging a foot operated feed on the drill press makes this bottom driller very, very fast and accurate.

That was back in the 1990/2000 era. Today you could just as easily use a $10 usb camera and a my crosshair on your computer screen or some such for centering.

Unforutnately, I don't know of any usb drill presses. 

[PRR]

.... crosshair on your computer screen or some such for centering.
Unforutnately, I don't know of any usb drill presses. 

Inverted crosshair drill documented here:
https://www.instructables.com/id/USB-Microscope-Guided-PCB-Drill/

USB powered hand drills are available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39xPhI6Utng
https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Drills-Portable-Handheld-Plastic/dp/B07T69KM46

[davent]

I detailed the inverted dremel, fixing the dremel drill press slop and the endoscope/crosshairs with a laptop rig a little while ago. Works great.

https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=105520.msg950670#msg950670

Can't wait for the security fix...
dave