Mill Drill vs Drill Press

[John1]

I need a drill press for my shop for fabicating etc;

Given the price is no object which would be best??

MILL DRILL or DRILL PRESS??

John1

[Dave Haak]

John 1,

"Given the price is no object " Both.



Dave

[Zrexxer]

I need a drill press for my shop for fabicating etc;

Given the price is no object which would be best??

MILL DRILL or DRILL PRESS??

John1

Depends on what you're doing. If you just need to drill holes, Drill Press. A mill/drill probably won't give you the same swing, and height under the chuck will be very limited with the mill/drill.

[Michael Albro]

you can drill with a mill but you can't mill with a drill.
go with the mill there is so much more you can do with a milling machine besides drilling holes you could mill slots, cut key ways in shafts, and such as that. yeah sure you can buy a drill press vice with X and Y axes and destroy the bearrings in the spindle of your drill press but why not just buy a mill?

[gde]

I agree with Michael Albro. But, since $ is not a major concern, buy a nice Mill and then buy a small bench top drill press under $300. You got both and chances are the drill press will work for most anything the Mill won't cover and viceversa

[hankj]

I'm in the both canp too, as long as the bucks are there. I'd go for a decent milling machine AND a good drill press. There are a few good combination machines available, but you always give up something from one process or the other in combo units.

Hank

[AV8OR]

Such an open ended question! A good new Bridgeport type mill is going run you around $8K and up. CNC Mill, many more bills than that! Small home shop mills $2K and up. 115v, 220v, three phase, what ya drill'en or mill'en, etc, etc, etc.

Bridgeport was the mill to get but they quit making mills about two years ago. Wells-Index are still made here but I've never been around one (they look nice).

There are two schools of thought out there on buying a mill new/used. If you buy used you can get a better USA made machine the problem is if you don't know what to look for you might get someone's elses junk. New will be off shore and but it can be hard to get a quality machine. Some call them works in progress.

Most guys seem to be happy with the Grizzly machines if you don't mind green and a bear on your tools.

The other machine I see kicked around is Jet.

A lot of guys have mill/drills but if you have the money and have the space I would get both the drill press and the vertical mill. A vertical mill will have a "knee" which will allow you to move your work up and down to change your tooling where a mill/drill machine will not have a knee. Get a mill that has a spindle R-8 taper. You will find cheaper tooling going with a R-8.

I've never seen anyone comment on the Jet JVM-836-1 vertical mill. A small Bridgeport type machine that runs 115v. It looks like a nice little machine for a small home shop.

[TRG-42]

Hi John, I have both and I can't remember when I only use my drill now for wood because I don't want sawdust on the mill

The small benchtop mills are awesome. You can get them with a round column or a box style dovetail colum. The dovetail column machines are much more rigid but more money

Geared head is also nice to have compared to a stepped belt.

You can buy a cross slide style drill press vise to attempt to mill with a drill press. The problem with that is the drill presses don't have the rigidity to mill and those vises have way to much slop

The mill will be way handier than a drill press . As far as the maximum height under a mill, it all depends what Mill you buy. Never had a lack of height on my mill

Just to warn you once you buy a mill you will start spending a fortune on tooling. Pretty easy to get carried away with all the "must have" milling accessories

As someone already mentioned a mill with a R8 spindle ( "Bridgeport style" ) taper is a good choice because there is a tone of good tooling on the used market like EBAY for that style.

As far as far east import vs European / Domestic , a new Taiwanese mill will be tighter than a worn out Bridgeport / Cincinati and cheaper to boot. It can be really hit and miss on the used market. Unlikely you will ever wear out a import mill

[szwedj]

For what it's worth, you can still get a Bridgeport, they are made by Hardinge now.
www.hardinge.com/index.asp?pageId=229

Joe