Mill Drill vs Drill Press for drilling holes

[HoosierBuddy]

Hey guys,

I've been in the market for an old floor drill press for my home shop, but nothing local seems to show up.

Then I got to thinking about MAYBE buying a mill drill (like a Grizzly G0704 or similar) for DRILLING ONLY (I already have a knee mill for milling).

I guess I'm thinking that a indexable table and especially the variable speed motor might make this a really nice machine for me.

Does anyone have a mill drill that they primarily use for drilling and if so, how does it have any inadequacies or deficiencies when compared to a decent stand alone drill press?

Phil

 

[ptschram]

Buy both!

If you have the knee mill, you have duplicate tooling, or tooling that can be used for both

 

[larry_g]

I don't have a mill drill anymore but had one for awhile and did a lot of hole drilling with it. One thing it had was power downfeed that make things easier plus the XY table to move to relative positions. I would think the MD would be preferable to a lightweight drill press.

I have 3 drill presses and still do a majority of drilling on the kneemill.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[zkling]

Well...what do you plan on drilling? Heavy drilling? Accurate, precise drilling? Drilling of complex layout holes? Why not use your current mill?

For the money you would spend on the new mill drill, you could get a very nice used drill press, that would be much more capable hole size wise. The question is....do you need that large hole drilling capacity?

Mill drills are very common for drilling in model making, knife making and the like, where generally smaller holes (sub ~3/8") are being drilled into smaller, somewhat complex pieces.

Otherwise use your current mill for layout with a center or spot drill. Then move it over to a floor drill press for the actual drilling. I have a baby clausing knee mill that is anymore almost only used for drilling, ex scope base mount drilling/tapping.