Milling with a drill press...

R

ryanv403

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I pimp knives and im looking for an easier method to use to mill out g10 handle scales. Is there a certain bit or technique i could use to make it an easier process? Thanks for any advice!
 
i have done so with cf & micarta but it's easy to make a mistake so be careful, & wear a mask! experiment with different bits. dremel diamond sanding bits are slow but best for finishing out the rough holes
 
My advice is to not use a drill press to mill. They are not made for side load and it will only be a matter of time before something bad happens.
 
The only time I will do anything of the sort is to plunge with a center cutting endmill. Even then, the setup has to be rigid. Any slop at all (usually with the cheap xy tables or drill press milling vises) will probably damage the cutter and do bad things.

Can someone tell me if there are side loads induced even with plunging? My intuition tells me that if plunging on one side of the end mill (where metal removal is not balanced), there are a lot of side loads.
 
Rick Marchand said:
My advice is to not use a drill press to mill. They are not made for side load and it will only be a matter of time before something bad happens.
Click to expand...

Good advice, at the very least you will ruin a good drill press, possibly a trip to the emergency room.
 
What does the cut look like, show a picture please?

Are you tearing material up or something?
 
We aren't getting what you mean.

If you google the thread title, milling with a drill press the hundreds of replies in a dozen forums will all tell you not to.


So what exactly are you thinking about doing to the scales ?



I see you've done this

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...toms-Pimp-Jobs-and-File-work!(Picture-Heavy!)

CtmYp.jpg


xp4F3.jpg



I'm thinking an oscillating spindle sander would help if you don't have one.
 
The Said earlier about milling with the drill press, not the greatest idea but I'm sure u already know, but when I have used the drill press in the past for milling g10 I used a router bit and it worked well for me just be careful, as said bad things could happen, good luck.
 
An oscillating spindle sander might be a good alternative. Grizzly has some affordable options. Have good dust collection, especially for that CF.
 
Lock down the height of your drill press, and you might be able to SAFELY use a ROTARY FILE to really hog out that material fast without too much wear on expendable abrassive stock.

(EDIT) That of course is only if the pictures posted are what you are doing, if you are "milling" material, listen to Rick and the others, it isn't worth it.
 
In a word, don't.

You can get attachments for Dremel/Craftsman rotary tools that allow them to be held and used like a small plunge router. I would look into that if you want to mill tang slots or something into handle materials.
 
If all your doing is trying to mill the scale shape from a block, you might be better off with a router table, or a router pattern and a hand held router.


-Xander
 
I tried milling with a drillpress before I had a milling machine. The chuck came off the taper at high speed and broke the work, damaged the taper and almost hit me. Do not repeat my stupid mistake. That was 19 years ago and I learned from it. Learn from my expensive experience

-Page
 
I've done it before with mixed results. The first time I did it was about 25 years ago when I didn't know any better and nothing bad happened, other than the part looked like it has been chewed out by a rabid beaver.

The second time I did it was about 5 years ago (I definitely knew better, but I had a good reason) and the plastic I was cutting pulled the cutter out of the chuck (the helix can do that) making the cut deeper and deeper (drill chucks don't grip that great) until the cutter froze in the plastic while the drill chuck kept spinning. Nothing went flying, but it did ruin a pretty nice drill chuck.

An X Y table on a drill press is intended for positioning. If you're using it for cutting you're going to want to take shallow depths of cut. You can expect poor finish and accuracy because runout is going to be all over the place, but it is better than nothing. As already stated it is hard on the spindle and it is possible to hurt yourself with a ham handed move, so this is not a very good practice.
 
I've just completed milling out five sets of wood handle slabs. This was my first try at this construction technique and I initially tried using a friend's nice, precision drill press and XY table. I'm not a machinist so maybe that had something to do with my poor results, but I went through three test pieces before I gave up in frustration - and just a bit of fear. I just couldn't get the precision I needed, and somthin' was gonna fly at some point!! So, I switched to routing them out with my dremmel fitted with this router base:
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/S...ision_Router_Bases/Precision_Router_Base.html

One test piece and I had the confidence to do the real pieces. I'm quite happy with the results, and I did it all sitting right at my work bench. As mentioned above(several times), the chuck will loose grip on the bit and gradually start cutting deeper, so you need to be vigilant and check that often.

-Peter
 
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