Porter Cable Drill Press PCB660DP Impressions

[JonnyC]

After researching drill presses for a long time and keeping on eye on CL, I decided to bite the bullet and just pick up the Porter Cable from Lowes. There is no runout on the spindle, and only slight runout (~.002") on a chucked up piece of tool stock. I could always upgrade to a nice chuck in the future.

However, there are some definite QC issues, I guess as to be expected for a $320 Chinese dp. Both motor and spindle pulleys are out of round. There is some binding in the quill assembly, to the point that you can hear a popping noise when lowering it. I started to disassemble it to deburr mating surfaces and replace the packing grease with oil. I even tossed the motor pulley on my 9x20 lathe to machine it true, which helped with the vibration.

I am really impressed with customer support so far though. I called them up today and they are sending me out two new pulleys, no questions asked. I'm not expecting them to be in any better shape, but we'll see.

I noticed the Grizzly G7944 seems to share the same design, and maybe I should have gone with that (although it's about 50% more cash). If the part images are correct, the Grizzly comes with steel pulleys instead of cast aluminum like the PC.

Any owners here of the PCB660DP have any other tips for making this machine run better? I know I shouldn't spend much time or money on it, but I do like to tinker.

 

[hunterguy86]

Nothing to add but subscribed for responses. I've been looking at this unit as the used market for old iron is nonexistent in my area


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[uart]

There is no runout on the spindle, and only slight runout (~.002") on a chucked up piece of tool stock. I could always upgrade to a nice chuck in the future.

That runout should be no problem Jonny. Just wondering what the quill slop is like. Say if you crank the quill down to about it's halfway travel, do you feel any quill slop?

 

[JonnyC]

The quill is really tight actually. I just took the whole thing apart last night to find the source of the binding. I think it's just the interface between the slot in the quill and the set screw / tensioner (whatever it's called). The slot is not very well machined and when the tensioner is somewhat tight, it binds a bit on the way down. I took some steel wool to the slot and will polish the set screw so it should be a bit more smooth. You would think there could be a better design to keep a quill from spinning than the standard steel set screw, but I haven't been able to think of anything.

Hopefully when the pulleys arrive they will be machined true. This thing was loaded with grease inside which I will be replacing, and I'll be using oil on the quill.

 

[uart]

The quill is really tight actually. I just took the whole thing apart last night to find the source of the binding. I think it's just the interface between the slot in the quill and the set screw / tensioner (whatever it's called). The slot is not very well machined and when the tensioner is somewhat tight, it binds a bit on the way down.

Yeah that's fairly common. On my last cheap DP I lathered it up fairly well with moly grease (MoS2) around that slot and that helped a lot.

 

[JonnyC]

So I received the two pulley's from Porter Cable in only a few days, which was awesome. They are steel pulleys too. However, they both have the exact same wobble as the aluminum ones. And actually, tossing the steel one on the motor caused more vibration due to the weight, so I just kept the aluminum one I had machined true on my lathe on there. I did toss the steel one on the spindle though, and despite it being off by a little bit (might be the shaft it mounts on that's off), it now runs quite smooth.

I put everything back together with either oil as a lubricant or moly grease. It honestly didn't improve the smoothness that much, but it's nice to know it's all set to go for a while now.