Saturday, December 12, 2015

Fixing Quill Spring For 10" King Drill Press

Project:
Making a replacement quill spring case

Difficulty Level (Easy, Medium, Hard, Insane):
Easy

Process:
When I bought a 10" king drill press at one of Woody's Auctions I learned a lesson: never bid on anything that you haven't had a decent time to inspect. Since I had brought my 1yr old daughter with me that day I was a bit distracted and unfortunately hadn't noticed that "someone" had tied an elastic tie strap around the top and fooled me into believing everything was ok with the drill press.

Once I got it home and took off the elastic, the quill dropped right down which is when I realized that the quill return spring was missing.

Anyways, after some searching online I found various ways to fix broken or missing quill springs but since I have a lathe now I figured I'd buy a $3 replacement spring on ebay and make myself a little housing on the lathe.

It was actually quite simple. I measured the spring once I got it in the mail, made the housing a bit bigger and a bit deeper, popped the spring into it but then I realized that the spring was too big for my drill press and because of that I had made the case too big for the drill press. Bummer. I ended up making the housing a bit smaller to fit on the drill press, made it a bit deeper and cut the spring in half. Once I installed the spring into the housing I bent the end to how it should be, painted the housing and installed it on the drill press. Take that woody!!!

Pictures:
The missing quill spring and housing
Cutting off a piece of 2" cold rolled steel which ended up being too small
Facing the CRS
The spring from ebay
The housing off of a smaller drill press
Cutting off a 2.25" piece of gray cast iron (nasty, dirty stuff) for the second attempt
Boring out the inside of the housing
The finished housing (2nd attempt)
The housing with the new spring (2nd attempt)
3rd attempt (smaller housing, 1" deep, 1.860" inside diameter, 2.25" outside diameter
The finished housing with the spring installed
The inside of the spring housing with the cut and bent spring
Putting a quick coat of paint on it
The installed housing
Another view
Tools:
Angle grinder
Pliers
Metal lathe
Tin snips
Drill bits

Materials:
1" of 2.25" gray cast iron
Black spray paint

Cost:
$3.00

Time:
1hr but only because I had to do it 3 times

Savings:
I don't know, maybe $30 bucks

Conclusion:
Works great and looks alright too

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