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Auto-feed mag drills: Fein, Hougen, BDS

DanielG

Stainless
Joined
Oct 22, 2014
Location
Maine
I need to buy a new mag drill. My current unit is a Milwaukee, which has served me well and I like. Unfortunately, I need to drill a bunch of holes in 30' long 5/8 wall HSS and in big C15x50 channels, and I haven't found a shop with enough x travel to do it, so I'm looking for something with autofeed.

My biggest hole is 1.5" diameter 3/4" deep. The other hole I have a bunch of is 1.125" diameter. I'd like to drill through the cover plate and the channel flange at once, which would cut the number of 1.125" holes almost in half. I would use stack cut geometry. Unfortunately, that's just over 2" of stack.

Options I'm looking at:
Fein JCM 200 Auto, 2" dia x 2" deep, $2400
Hougen HMD927, 1.625" dia x 2" deep, $1450
BDS AutoMAB 350, 35mm x 55mm, although the US distributor says it has 1.5" capacity
BDS AutoMAB 450, 45mm x 55mm

I think I can tweak the design enough to get under a 55mm stack. I see 3" and longer cutters, but I can't find a reasonably sized auto-feed drill that is rated for them. The only one I found is the BDS 1300V, which is very big and expensive.

Does anyone have any suggestions, thoughts, or experience with these models?

Alternatively, does anyone know a shop with a beam line that will do really small quantity work?
 
the hougan HMD918 will run the longer cutters no power feed but someone is going to have to sit there and babysit it any way. a 2" cut is what? a little over a minute? more time would be spent repositioning it than actual drilling. my 2 cents.
I have used my milwaukee until its falling apart so I have been looking to get another trying to decide what brand myself
 
Do you need "caryy it to the job" mag drill press ?

You mentioned how a beam line would work, but the qty's you have are small.

Can you arrange some infeed/outfeed tables to slide the parts under a more stationary
(and beefy-er) DP ?

Listening to a universal motor whine it's way thru the day get's old fast, as well as the
low power they put out (everything you've posted plugs into 120 vac)

if you could get in under a DP or even a drill head, you could really put some power to it
(like a Bridgeport head with 3 hp, or any "Drillunit" like head sourced from HGR)

Might even get into inserted carbide drills, and really step up productivity.
 
I think you can get a mag drill for less than a drill line, but if budgeted the little single spindle Oceans are not bad... It is really a peddinghaus - defiantly not a Controlled, but good enough for a medium size fabricating shop running a few beams/tubes a week. The ocean has a small foot print, so maybe steal their concept and make your own like dd says with the drill head on track instead of conveyors (30' stock is 60+ feet of conveyor)
 
I have drilled through 2 1/4" with 2" cutters. You just need to put it at the lowest point where the screws connect.

To me, I dont like auto feed since it's so easy to walk away or damage the cutter. But drilling all those holes manually is just as annoying.



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