At what height do you like your drillpress?

Patrice Lemée

Patrice Lemée

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Aug 13, 2002
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I made a higher stand for one of the press and realized that I might have been using them a little low.
At what height do you like the actual drilling to happen?
 
For safety, hopefully eyes are not close to horizontal to the drill press table. Even though we all wear eye protection all the time. :)
 
I like it so I can grip the handle and let the weight of my arm be the feed pressure, in most cases... But for knifemaking, I use a variable speed hand drill.
 
That's an interesting question Patrice, and you've got me thinking. My presses are set up so the table is basically at sternum height. Like 69, I use the weight of my arm to provide most of the feed pressure and that's good (no strain, no pain), but I often find myself leaning down/forward to see what's going on, and that's bad.
 
Measured mine for ya. I use a Grizzly bench-top....G7943. It sits on my bench, which is 38" off the floor. The bottom of the chuck, without any bits in of course, comes in at about 60". It's higher up than any floor model I've used, but I am 6' 1" and it feels very natural for me having it at this height. I have to stand on something to be able to change belt speed, but it's no biggie.

Adam Buttry
 
I have three different drill presses for dedicated tasks.
One I'll show here is for drilling tiny holes that I can view up close.

 
Mine is floor standing and I'm average height so the chuck is approximately chest high. That seems about right.

I can certainly see how people of different height would need to raise or lower their drill press to match their stature. Work benches are normally built higher or lower to match the worker.
 
My eyes are about six inches higher then my chuck, which also allows me to use the weight of my arm to control the feed as well

Bad part about that is I have to use a step stool to change the belt speed ;0)
 
Thanks measuring guys. I ended up lifting the main drillpress from about 47” (where the cutitng happens) to roughly 54” which is about what Adam and Ken have their drillpress at. The other one is not as high at 52”. I am 6'2” by the way. I'll see how I like both but I am already pretty sure that this will be a big improvement.

It is funny that as much as I researched and tweaked the height of my other machines, I always used drillpresses as is even though it was a pain always scooting down to see the work or just if the drillbit was in the center of the chuck jaws. :o Guess you are never too old to learn. :o

Thanks again for your input. :thumbup:
 
About mid sternum level. It's about the correct distance from my eyes because I wear bifocal lenses.

Ric
 
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