As some of you will know I have been working on converting a small drill press into a small, light duty milling machine.

This page will not be as detailed as my lathe page so here goes. Most of you who have followed my lathe project will now know what castings in general look like, so for the most part I will only show the finished parts.



This is the starting point, the drill press I intend to convert.

The first step was to decide what the new miller's capacity would be, to this end I decided on a work table 80mm X 250mm with three 1/4" T-slots. The table would have 250mm left/right movement (X-axis)and approximately 80mm forewards/backwards movement (Y-axis).

I decided on a simple lathe like ways for the Y-axis, and a split ways for the X-axis. The first step was to cast the Y-axis ways bed, I decided to cast a couple of other parts in the same melt to speed things along.



The other parts are a hand wheel (three required), a finger grip (five required), and one of three thrust plates.

The next job was to cast the work table and carriage, the only pictures I have of these is as The underside of the work table and the completed XY-stage. So here is the underside of the work table, you can see the split ways that I built. The purpose of the split ways was to enable me to place the drive nut in the center of the carriage and for the feed screw to be under the work table so it is protected from swarf.



The work table's split ways.



Well as I alluded to earlier, here is the picture of the completed XY-stage.

Here are the last three parts that needed to be cast, the large hand wheel for the vertical adjustment, the bearing housing for the vertical adjustment screw, and the body for the face mill required to mill the work table flat.



The last castings required.

Stay tuned for pictures of the completed convertion!

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