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radial drill new to me

idacal

Hot Rolled
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Aug 9, 2011
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new plymouth id
I picked up an older jet 939 radial drill, 5 horse with a 3' arm and an angle table. I am in the process of getting it anchored down, fixed the power lock and just basic maintenance. I'm wondering about advice and tricks for running one of these. Im looking forward to being able to tap without using an impact or by hand. so what kind of chuck is used to hold taps? also any tricks for picking up a center punch hole? on a weak drill press i just slide it around until it picks up the center punch but I think that's a good way to lose fingers on this. also it is set up to bore with, least it has the double drift holes, does anyone have any pictures of a morse boring head with the drift hole? I dont even know what its called to research it any advice would be great it has a #4 morse
 
I picked up an older jet 939 radial drill, 5 horse with a 3' arm and an angle table. I am in the process of getting it anchored down, fixed the power lock and just basic maintenance. I'm wondering about advice and tricks for running one of these. Im looking forward to being able to tap without using an impact or by hand. so what kind of chuck is used to hold taps? also any tricks for picking up a center punch hole? on a weak drill press i just slide it around until it picks up the center punch but I think that's a good way to lose fingers on this. also it is set up to bore with, least it has the double drift holes, does anyone have any pictures of a morse boring head with the drift hole? I dont even know what its called to research it any advice would be great it has a #4 morse

You talking about a SECOND slot? For a locking-key, not the knock-out drift?
As I have on my column drill, 5 MT?

Horizontal Boring Mill MT tooling has those. 4 MT could be skeerce as it is on the small side for a bar.

Meanwhile, scout you a 4 MT hand-reamer. The edges of the knock-out slot tend to get raised bumps and mess-up proper seating of the tapered-tails.

Look for "floating tap holder", but not-only. Under an inch, yah may also want a Procunier, Tapmatic, or similar rather than trying to finesse the clutch.
 
yes a locking key slot, would like to find a boring head but not real important. but tapping is something I hate doing by hand never get them straight, quickly ,I will start looking for a floating tap holder it has reverse with a flip of a switch. I ordered a couple of spiral point taps and one spiral flute tap see how fast they break. I do a fair amount of 5/8 and 3/4 threads and that after a while gets old.
 
yes a locking key slot, would like to find a boring head but not real important. but tapping is something I hate doing by hand never get them straight, quickly ,I will start looking for a floating tap holder it has reverse with a flip of a switch. I ordered a couple of spiral point taps and one spiral flute tap see how fast they break. I do a fair amount of 5/8 and 3/4 threads and that after a while gets old.

How big is the column? I have used an old Carlton that had somewhere around a 12"dia column. Not sure on HP, but it would drive a 3" 2 flute HSS drill without a peep. We had tap drivers (like a morse taper sleeve, but with a square end like a ER tap collet)... think we had up to 1 1/2 or so. 5/8 would have been small'ish for that machine *

*Not sure if any of that helps :o
 
You can drive taps with those Scully Jones split sleeve drivers, can find em on ebay cheap sometimes. Can also make something out of an old mt4 tool that gets no use/broken. Just drill a hole for the shank size of the tap and install some large set screws to engage the flats. Can also use a tapping head.
 
yes a locking key slot, would like to find a boring head but not real important. but tapping is something I hate doing by hand never get them straight, quickly ,I will start looking for a floating tap holder it has reverse with a flip of a switch. I ordered a couple of spiral point taps and one spiral flute tap see how fast they break. I do a fair amount of 5/8 and 3/4 threads and that after a while gets old.

Did a LOT of 1 1/4" common to one of our mining machines. Slickern' Owl s**t, usually. Only ever bustid the one. Had the work chained to the side of the table. Kinked chain popped loose, fourth of four holes, tilted the work.

Not fun getting it out, having the hole welded up, drilling and tapping again. One does become more careful.
 
I have pretty much that same exact drill without the JET name on it. It's a little guy, not going to push a 3" drill and will probably struggle to push 1".

Work close to the column as possible. It doesn't have the rigidity to push much away from the column.

For tapping mine just has an instant fwd/rev switch. You just grab a tap however you choose and drive it in, coast to a stop then flick reverse and pull it out. You don't need a floating holder or anything.

On mine, the clamps aren't the greatest. Mine is in like-new shape and the clamps just don't hold like a bigger machine would. MY HBM has power clamps and that's what most of the "real" radials I've been around have.
 
On this one the bearings were out onthe column lock that was the reason the guy couldnt get it working right, it was always triggering both sensor switches. And wouldnt lock. Had little tiny chinese needle bearings in something that rotates 1/2 turn. Its a 9.5 column. my 6000 lbs forlift new it was there probably 4500 lbs or so definetly not a monster but hopefully it will be more convieniant than the mag drill or mill that we have been using for drilling.
 
For hole layout, there is a heavy punch I can make a mark large enough I can pick it up with a 1" drill.

The split sleeve tap driver is a MT3 with a 3/4 tap.

The rails have a step on them, so the clamp just had to keep the workpiece from lifting out of the step.

The boring head is retained by a key I made that locks with a 1/8 hex key.

As long as your boring bar doesn't chatter you should be able to get by without a tool lock.

Depending on your spindle configuration, it may not be rigid enough for boring.

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thank you gbent thats the kind of set ups and stuff i was looking for and if I can't bore with it no big loss it does have the locking key slot but the spindle seems bridgeport small. if the project is to big to get in the mill Iwill figure out how to run an outboard bearing if needed. . as long as I can tap! it came with a table like that just a whole lot more holes in it absolutely abused. trying to clean that up now flattening it back out in shaper now. but not sure how to plug all the holes
 
One method for fixing holes is to drill and tap for tapered pipe. Wind in a cast iron pipe plug and cut off the excess. Should leave a nearly invisible repair. They can be daisy chained together. Lock-n-stitch and Irontite also make a larger range of cast iron plugs.
 
For hole layout, there is a heavy punch I can make a mark large enough I can pick it up with a 1" drill.

The split sleeve tap driver is a MT3 with a 3/4 tap.

The rails have a step on them, so the clamp just had to keep the workpiece from lifting out of the step.

The boring head is retained by a key I made that locks with a 1/8 hex key.

As long as your boring bar doesn't chatter you should be able to get by without a tool lock.

Depending on your spindle configuration, it may not be rigid enough for boring.

View attachment 280237

Is your radial arm drill not bolted to the floor ?

Regarding picking up marked out centre punch holes we always ran the drill in reverse to pick up the punch mark, lock the arm, then drill your hole.

Regards Tyrone.
 
I’m waiting on concrete anchors before I start playing with it. Running backwards to pick up a center? I will try that. do you knock off the raised edges of the center prick first? Or just pick it up and drill it.
 
I’m waiting on concrete anchors before I start playing with it. Running backwards to pick up a center? I will try that. do you knock off the raised edges of the center prick first? Or just pick it up and drill it.

No, just bang in a good centre punch mark. Run the drill at a decent speed in reverse and you'll find the the drilling head will centre itself. Lock up everything then. Depending on what size of hole you intend to drill you may need a pilot drill first.

In the real world everything was marked out correctly. IE the OD of a drilled hole would be marked out with dividers and dotted on the four quadrants. If a plot hole was going to be required that would be marked out in the same fashion. Tapped holes - the tapping drill size would be marked out and dotted as well as the OD of the tapped hole. Reamed holes - the same, with two of the opposite quadrants scratched out with your scriber so the driller would know what was required.

That way any mistakes could be picked up,and more importantly, the blame for them apportioned !

Again in the real world - radial arm drills were always bolted down. A drilled and tapped steel plate was let into the ground in front of the drill for bigger jobs and a pit was dug at the back of the drill for long jobs. Apart from preventing the obvious danger of the drill accidentally falling over the drill was bolted down so when you were drilling either off the steel plate or down the pit you couldn't accidentally push the drill over.

One more thing - in the UK it's mandatory that radial arm drills have a" Jet Brake ". That's an extendable sensor like an old car radio aerial that is fitted near the spindle. If it's activated it injects DC current into an AC motor and stops the spindle dead ! They can be a nuisance because long chips can come up and hit the sensor but they may save your life. I used to keep my hand on the feed selector lever and when the chips got too long I'd move the lever briefly and interrupt the feed to break off the chips.

It saved the life of a workmate of mine when the drill got hold of his overalls. Another guy in town used to go around in a wheelchair because his " Jet Brake " wasn't set up correctly.

Regards and be careful, Tyrone.
 
thank you my anchors came in to day so will get it anchored today. when i figure out where i want the final place for it, I was thinking about auguring in a piece of pipe into the ground beside it to put centers in on parts going into the lathe. but om not sure where I want it yet. may not like it at all. everything else I have in the shop is old european or american iron. have about 20 holes in the table to work round will try using it first. my pictures are aL OF sudden being just thumb nails not sure what has changed.
 

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thank you my anchors came in to day so will get it anchored today. when i figure out where i want the final place for it, I was thinking about auguring in a piece of pipe into the ground beside it to put centers in on parts going into the lathe. but om not sure where I want it yet. may not like it at all. everything else I have in the shop is old european or american iron. have about 20 holes in the table to work round will try using it first. my pictures are aL OF sudden being just thumb nails not sure what has changed.

You can either plug those holes up or fill them with plastic metal. We'd normally plug them up with cast iron round bar that we had threaded in various BSP sizes. We'd wind the bar in quite tight, mark it and wind it out again. Then we'd groove the bar with a parting off tool in the right place leaving it with a centre core of about 3/8". You could then wind it back in until it went tight again and the core snapped off.
You'd normally leave about 1/16" to 1/8" standing proud for a clean up.

You can't beat having a decent radial arm drill. Tapping large tapped holes is made really easy.

Regards, Tyrone.
 
You can either plug those holes up or fill them with plastic metal. We'd normally plug them up with cast iron round bar that we had threaded in various BSP sizes. We'd wind the bar in quite tight, mark it and wind it out again. Then we'd groove the bar with a parting off tool in the right place leaving it with a centre core of about 3/8". You could then wind it back in until it went tight again and the core snapped off.
I might go that extra mile on a mill. Fortunately, no need. Lucked out, inherited near-virgin tables all around.

The Alzmettal column drill as has had to substitute for the radial I've NO space for, will have to get by with chemical cleaning and Devcon o/e, best-case. More likey, apathy and nothing atall!

Far the more important, radial OR "heavy" column drill, is whether the Tee slots are in useful order. Fixtured plates can be lovely, any repetitive work, and those can be "finessed", usually, so it ain't a show-stopper, even so.

These 3-inch-hole capable root-hogs (7 HP, here) just ain't in the same league as far as need of serious torque control and workholding "grip" as the average wood-usually, metal-only-now-and-then Walker-Turner, Delta, or Asian pretender.

Gots to up yer game, and put the needfuls as to clamping close to-hand, lest yah get lazy, careless - potentially injured - for lack of a healthy ration of respect if-not-also even a touch of paranioa.

Just because a drillpress ain't a lathe or mill doesn't mean it's harmless.
 
I have lifted more nails off in a horror freight drill press than any other shop machine, besides a hand grinder, think I can hold the stock and it gets away and wack no nail, learned a lot of things the hard way when I was a teenager at home. thats part of why I want a big enough machine that help is not tempted to do that.
 
I have lifted more nails off in a horror freight drill press than any other shop machine, besides a hand grinder, think I can hold the stock and it gets away and wack no nail, learned a lot of things the hard way when I was a teenager at home. thats part of why I want a big enough machine that help is not tempted to do that.

Early teens, some student tried to run a rather modest sized ignorant helical twist drill through a simple sheet of galvanized, laid flat, no backing, held down only by hand-pressure.

Naturally it grabbed. Naturally he jumped back. Naturally it spun like a weed-whacker disk. Sliced his belly open before his mass stopped it, and deeply enough to need several stitches!

Weird thing is, the same guy bent over a lighted "Fisher" burner in HS chem lab another "distracted" day and burnt right through shirt and into his belly before he reacted!

And yet... same guy could hand forge Old French Quarter N'Orleans style twisted Iron gates and railings as neat and identical, one to the next as ever was.

So it wasn't as if he was a klewless f**kwit.

"Time and circumstance happen to us all."
 
Once you get to the powerful machines you need to learn how to set up properly. Clamping work to the table can be an art. Any fool can use a drill vice or machine vice. The guys that taught me were real set up experts. Having said that some of the drilling jobs were that big and heavy they didn't need clamping at all.

Even a small pillar drill can hurt you though. I was drilling about a 5/8" hole in a cast iron bracket about 6" cubed. I was rushing so I was holding it with one hand, no clamps. All of a sudden the drill snatched, and grabbed the bracket out of my hand. The hole was off set so after spinning around a couple of times the drill broke and the bracket was thrown out. Unfortunately it was thrown straight at me and it hit me in the chest.

It knocked all the wind out of me and I ended up on all fours shouting for help. No real harm done but it taught me a lesson I never forgot. Never hold anything on the drill press in your hands.

Regards Tyrone.
 








 
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