My first question would be do you think the magnet base can withstand side load? What material do you envision milling? What are you using to hold your endmill? Magdrills are perfect for drilling holes is metal you normally couldn’t get to a drill press. They also have a very limited depth of cut along with limited speed options which will greatly limit the material you can work with when milling. Also by the time you buy a decent mag drill cobble together this table and add an x/y table you could have bought a legit mill. Maybe not the best mill but it would still be better than anything you are attempting to build. With milling machines rigidity is your friend and you setup has zero rigidity.
Mostly light duty work on plastics, aluminum, copper, slowly on mild steel. Stuff I do occasionally on a drill press at the moment. The depth of cut limitation is why I'm thinking drill press base w/z rack and mag drill because you can just take it off and use it as a mag drill. As to the sideload....I suppose magnets have less shear holding than axially (unlike adhesives) tho you can easily counter that by making the magnet base a tight fit to keep it from sliding. They do make slotting mag drills (pictured). Good point on the RPMs tho I'm looking at one w/some range adjustment. 500$ ball park w/the setup I'm envisioning (chicom mag drill + used press off FB). I understand about the stiffness though that typically comes w/a weight penalty.
Oh, as for tooling....they make these in Morse, weldon, and nitto kohki shanks as far as I can tell. I'd probably choose weldon as I'd have falling bits w/morse and find nothing for nitto.
For the money you’re spending on a good mag drill I’m pretty sure you can get a decent drill press unless it’s the mag drill your after and want to make it more usable
There's good and then there's good enough. My Wen press has been fine as have my cordless so might give a chicom drill a try. And yes, dual purpose is mostly why I want to use the mag drill tho the spindle/quills appear beefier if I want to do milling.
I don't understand the temptation to try to mill with a drill press, a mag drill is even worse!
well.....price, bulk, heft. A drill press gets more use (by me) so space as well. Arguably mills are more of a pain to setup for drilling tho don't suspect that would change much in my scenario.
