In late 2014, my friend Tom Lipton dropped me a note with a link to a Craigslist ad for a precision drill press.
Tom knew I was in the market for a precision drill press because he very kindly spent a big chunk of one have afternoon with me in his awesome shop, trying to help me convert an old Covington Manual Gem Drill motor and a really old microscope frame into a DIY precision drill press. Tom even went so for as to give me a sweet little 0-3mm capacity Albrecht keyless chuck to run on it!
It's unfortunate that the effort ultimately proved fruitless. The motor wasn't capable of running true enough to run really small drills. I knew it was asking a lot of it to run that accurately...far beyond the needs of the original machine.
Anyway, I responded to the ad right away and as the owner was just down the road from my office in San Jose , I went down at lunch time to check it out.
You can probably guess what happens next...
Tom knew I was in the market for a precision drill press because he very kindly spent a big chunk of one have afternoon with me in his awesome shop, trying to help me convert an old Covington Manual Gem Drill motor and a really old microscope frame into a DIY precision drill press. Tom even went so for as to give me a sweet little 0-3mm capacity Albrecht keyless chuck to run on it!
It's unfortunate that the effort ultimately proved fruitless. The motor wasn't capable of running true enough to run really small drills. I knew it was asking a lot of it to run that accurately...far beyond the needs of the original machine.
Anyway, I responded to the ad right away and as the owner was just down the road from my office in San Jose , I went down at lunch time to check it out.
You can probably guess what happens next...