A friend of mine has a Blackhawke PD22-12 drill press. The quill is really long. Any idea why? I couldn't find anything online.
It is shown in the photo fully retracted. The larger diameter part is what moves. The skinny part just sticks out as shown all the time.
It has to be that long to accept the 2 Morse Taper chuck/tooling and to have access to the slot to get the wedge in to remove the chuck. Otherwise, you have to slot the quill so you can access the slot in the spindle with a wedge, and the quill has to be partially extended to get the wedge in to remove the chuck.
Both approaches were used. I happen to have examples of both. Here's a Powermatic with a "long" spindle like the ones you showed, and a Rockwell with the slot in the quill. You can see I had to extend the quill to see the slot.
Now technically, the Rockwell did not come this way. Rather, it simply came with a male Jacobs taper on the end of the spindle which was short/compact, but didn't allow for easily interchanging tooling.
The original owner decided that was not for him, so he actually machined his own quill/spindle assembly as well as a new lower bearing carrier so it would accept 2MT tooling. His original sketch attached.
