Placeholder17
Well-known member
I was looking for a used right angle drill (like many tools, simply because I didn't have one and thought I might need one some day). In my area, the Facebook Marketplace options are all Milwaukee with the red plastic handle/rear half of the housing. I waited some time and found exactly what I was looking for, a 100% aluminum Rockwell in pristine condition with the case and two handles.
This is late 60's/early 70's per Rockwell catalogs. The drill is 500 RPM without the right angle adapter and 350 or 750 RPM depending on which way the adapter is flipped. It used a mix of shielded and sealed ball bearings, and the gearbox grease is very soft despite the lack of a gasket around the gearbox rim, so I think someone before me took this apart and refurbished it/replaced a few bearings. However, the grease in the sealed bearings was getting dry.
The cool part of this tool is the mounting of the adapter and chuck. No need for heating the chuck with a torch and hammering away at an allen wrench in the jaws to spin it off. The end of the main drill shaft and each adapter shaft are machined with flat wings which rigidly lock into a machined slot in the base of the chuck and in a coupler between the adapter and drill shaft hidden in the arm clamp. You simply unscrew the screw inside the chuck jaws and it slides off under its own weight. This would also let you reverse the orientation of the adapter in only a few minutes. It's not as functional as the Milwaukee hole dawg that lets you change gearing speed inside the gearbox with an external lever, but then again it's simpler with no gear shift mechanism to jam/break by mistake.
Another cool thing about this is that the Milwaukee right-angle drills only have threads for handles on the main body of the drill, but the Rockwell also has threads on the right-angle adapter right behind the chuck so you can have better control.
Of course, this will once get used once in a blue moon, so I'll just keep the adapter in low gear forever for control/torque.
I am curious... for anyone else with a Rockwell drill (industrial, not a home model), was this chuck mounting configuration a standard feature or unique to the drill body sold specifically for use with the right-angle adapter?
This is late 60's/early 70's per Rockwell catalogs. The drill is 500 RPM without the right angle adapter and 350 or 750 RPM depending on which way the adapter is flipped. It used a mix of shielded and sealed ball bearings, and the gearbox grease is very soft despite the lack of a gasket around the gearbox rim, so I think someone before me took this apart and refurbished it/replaced a few bearings. However, the grease in the sealed bearings was getting dry.
The cool part of this tool is the mounting of the adapter and chuck. No need for heating the chuck with a torch and hammering away at an allen wrench in the jaws to spin it off. The end of the main drill shaft and each adapter shaft are machined with flat wings which rigidly lock into a machined slot in the base of the chuck and in a coupler between the adapter and drill shaft hidden in the arm clamp. You simply unscrew the screw inside the chuck jaws and it slides off under its own weight. This would also let you reverse the orientation of the adapter in only a few minutes. It's not as functional as the Milwaukee hole dawg that lets you change gearing speed inside the gearbox with an external lever, but then again it's simpler with no gear shift mechanism to jam/break by mistake.
Another cool thing about this is that the Milwaukee right-angle drills only have threads for handles on the main body of the drill, but the Rockwell also has threads on the right-angle adapter right behind the chuck so you can have better control.
Of course, this will once get used once in a blue moon, so I'll just keep the adapter in low gear forever for control/torque.
I am curious... for anyone else with a Rockwell drill (industrial, not a home model), was this chuck mounting configuration a standard feature or unique to the drill body sold specifically for use with the right-angle adapter?
