My drill press came with a very heavy table:
And this table originally had a gear driven lifting mechanism on it:
Unfortunately, among the previous owners/users of this drill press was some mental midget who apparently hammered on the lift crank without loosening the column pinch bolts, thereby breaking off several teeth on the lift crank pinion gear, and damaging the mating rack gears.
So, when I got the press, I disassembled it and removed the broken gear and rack, and planned to fabricate a lifting mechanism for it. (original rack parts are extremely rare and prohibitively expensive.)
First, I got a HF trailer jack to modify for lifting/lowering the table, and cut some uni-strut to use for mounting it:
I used a pair of muffler clamps to mount the uni-strut sections to the drill press column, and bolted the trailer jack mount plate to them:
I originally made a delrin roller to fit where the jack wheel was, but clearances under the drill press table precluded its use, so I went with just butting the wheel bracket against the bottom of the table:
None of this is original thinking. I have seen this done on other forum postings, and simply did what they did.
The column pinch bolts for this table were 3/4" nuts, requiring the use of a wrench to loosen/tighten them for table adjustments.
So, I made some hand lever nuts to replace them with.
First I cut a slot through a couple of coupling nuts:
Then I cut and modified a couple of bolts:
And mated the two pieces with roll pins:
And installed them in place of the original pinch nuts:
I also shortened the crank handle on the trailer jack, to reduce the circumference of the circle required to operate it:
Now I have an easy, no-tools-required way to raise/lower the table, and plenty of range:
And, if I need more room than that, I can always flip the jack out of the way and drop the table more:
All I have left to do to finish this drill press refurbish is to find a new chuck to replace the worn out one it came with.