Long post warning... full assembly. Woohoo!
Time to put this bad boy back together. Took the better part of a Saturday morning and afternoon, but got done completely. Several times, I referred back to the original disassembly photos to get the sequence and connections right. The good news is that everything moves a lot easier now, so it's not too bad to have a do-over if necessary.
Start at the bottom and work up, beginning with the table raiser assembly.
Now the table and table raiser bracket casting.
The head support bracket, placed randomly on the column for a moment.
Now the head, then slide the support bracket up into place below it.
I had to make a decision at this point. When the machine arrived, the top of the table raiser drive screw was installed into the hole in the back of the head support bracket. You can see it back on page 1 in the original posts. The problem with that is that it sort of defeats the functionality of the table raiser, from what I can tell, because it limits the range of travel to within the length of the drive screw. A user would never be able to drop the entire table way down low without taking the head clamp bracket with it, thus losing the support for the head. So I decided that I'd rather keep the head support in place and use the raiser assembly without that upper bracket in place to keep it stable. Others may choose differently, but it took a while to figure it out. Bottom line, it's different than configured upon arrival, but I would consider it more functional this way.
After repacking the bearings with grease, install the spindle pulley.
Install the quill and the pinion. Quill first, lock it with the quill lock so that it doesn't fall out, then wiggle the pinion through and install the little return spring tab.
Install the return spring, tension it at least a little bit so that the internal keyway and tab stay engaged.
Install the handle, including the key that keeps it from spinning loose on the shaft.
darn, forgot to install the belt before installing the handle, pinion, and spindle. I knew that. Really, I did. The one thing that I've always considered to be somewhat of a design flaw on these WT900 drill presses is that the belt is fully captured inside the spindle and head casting. That means to replace a belt, you have to take off the handle, pull the return spring and pinion, and drop the spindle down low enough to get a belt between the top of the pulley and the head casting. It only takes 10-15 minutes, but it's still a bit of a pain. Oh well, no big deal for now, just a little do-over, in this case about five minutes.
Install the quill and depth stop bracket. We could do the stop rod itself now, but I'm going to hold off and do that later while making final adjustments.
Now on to the motor. You can either install the motor mount on the machine and then the motor onto the mount, or you can assemble everything on the bench and the mount the much heavier assembly onto the motor all at once. I chose the latter.
First the mounting rods, then the motor, then the motor pulley. The pulley is a very tight fit, and will again require a puller if it's going to come back off again in the future. I'll adjust the motor location on the mount later when it's mounted on the machine, in order to align the pulleys. For now, it's just easier to get the mounting bolts in place when gravity is working for you rather against.
And now it's on. There are still a number of adjustments to do for the motor to align the pulleys and to set the proper depth of the mounting rods for belt tension. But at least it's on.
Now to check the spindle runout. I didn't do this earlier because I like to check it both by slowly turning the belt by hand, then under power at speed. The spindle nose runout is less than .001, closer to .0005. That'll do, for sure. Whew... really glad to know that, especially after all this work. That is a critical aspect for this or any drill press to be functional.
Before getting on with the electrical, test the mechanical parts... pulleys, belts, and bearings to see if everything runs right across all four speed ranges.
Install the depth stop rod and test the quill range of motion. A lot of times, you'll find that stickiness in the quill is actually the result of the stop rod being twisted slightly and binding in the casting bracket. I've spent a fair amount of time before trying to figure out what needs to be tweaked in the quill/spindle/bearings/lubrication, only to find that it was just the stop rod that needed to be loosened and readjusted to free up the range of travel..
OK, now something that surprised me and took an hour or so of troubleshooting. I had already installed the spindle cap earlier, since it also serves as the upper pulley bearing retainer. When I first fired up the machine, it made a really odd whirring/high-pitched whine. Uh-oh, that's really not good... could be the bearings have to be dealt with and/or replaced after all. Took the spindle cap off, and the sound went away completely. Through a process of trial-and-error, repeatedly installing/tightening/loosening/readjusting the spindle cap, it became clear that it's not just a part that you slap into place and tighten down. It has a major direct effect on performance of the upper bearing. So I carefully and slowly adjusted all five of the mounting bolts shown below... the two side bolts that tighten the cap laterally, and the three top bolts that tighten it vertically. The conclusion is that the three top-mount bolts need to be tightened just one little pull shy of fully tight. They're still firmly in place, but that last tug solid introduces downward pressure on the bearing that changes its noise/performance significantly. Just slightly loose and all is well. Eventually, I eventually got it dialed in nicely, but it was much trickier than I had even realized may be the case.
At this point, we're ready to finish up the electrical, including installing the switch. I put in two upgrades on the motor side: installed a cord tension relief bracket on the side of the j-box, and drilled/installed a machine screw hole to provide a ground for the otherwise ungrounded motor. I never let an ungrounded machine leave here for someone else's use.
Install the chuck with a good solid rap with a mallet.
Check the runout on a chucked up rod that's pretty reliable, though not specifically a machined measuring gauge. Runout is a bit less than .004 half an inch below the chuck jaws... not perfect, but certainly not bad. It's actually a bit better than the 17" Delta that's my main daily user, and some of the runout is undoubtedly in the measuring rod that I'm using. It's way fine for user purposes, all things considered.
So now we have an assembled, ready-to-use drill press. The final product photos are coming in the next post, but this project is now done.
Bill.
