Mico miniature drill press rehab and machinist help needed.

[Mr_Mike]

I came across a cute little drill press and figured if nothing else, I could salvage the motor and base for other projects.



I decided I'd try to get it working and use it to run small tools.

Here is an after picture. All the good parts cleaned up nice mostly with electrolysis.



And a tiny video to prove it works...



I have it cleaned up and running, but it has a few faults. It has no handle, but some 5/16 drill rod should fix that. It had a limited range of motion because the gear on the pinion shaft is boogered up too. I have the shaft installed such that you can get almost one rotation until you get to the bad teeth. It should be good enough.

The biggest fault makes it unusable right now. The business end of the spindle should be 1/4" to accept a collet but looks more tapered and bent. its not really bent, just one side is tapered.

Here is a pic and a video of the shaft.





I'm looking for someone to clean up the end of the shaft to fit a press-on JT0 taper.

This is the chuck I would like to use. It comes with a press-on taper for a 5mm shaft. Sorry, can't seem to link a pic, so the URL will have to do.

miniature chuck with adapter.

[MarkSingleton]

Not the kind of item you are going to find on Ebay every day, a replacement shaft. Which would be the easiest.

Bending it back into position, and NOT having it screwed up worse as a result, is unlikely but I suppose possible.

Which leaves having one made as a one off. Which is so expensive you had better know someone who will do it for a bbq dinner and materials. A home shop machinist, a really good one, is what you need. Maybe make a listing on your local craigslist or something. There is maybe somebody out there....

It's too nice a machine to just scrap..

[Mr_Mike]

MarkSingleton said:

---

Not the kind of item you are going to find on Ebay every day, a replacement shaft. Which would be the easiest.

Bending it back into position, and NOT having it screwed up worse as a result, is unlikely but I suppose possible.

Which leaves having one made as a one off. Which is so expensive you had better know someone who will do it for a bbq dinner and materials. A home shop machinist, a really good one, is what you need. Maybe make a listing on your local craigslist or something. There is maybe somebody out there....

It's too nice a machine to just scrap..

---

I don't think the shaft is bent. I think its just boogered up on one side and has the appearance of being bent.

It is certainly not bent from the lower bearing up to the tip of the splines. I rolled it on my granite surface plate and I'm fairly confident its just the tip.

I think that the tip can be cleaned up to 5mm on a lathe so I can use the chuck I linked to. At least, that is the hope. Of course, the machinist would have to have a chuck that can swallow about 8" of the shaft so the end can be cleaned up easily, but I think that is common.

[The Tinman]

Hi Mike
I'm a long way away but I have the machinery to give it a try. My lathe is plenty big enough to true up that shaft with no problems. If you want to PM me or better yet, send me an email (link is in my profile) I will see what I can do.

[MarkSingleton]

Well, I watched that shaft turn about six times, and it still LOOKS bent. But you are obviously in a much better position to make the call.

Had not clicked on the link to the chuck you propose to use. Now that I have, I see where you are going with the idea.

Good luck with your project. It looks a lot better than you first got it thats for sure!

[Mr_Mike]

I'm taking a few hours of rest after spending the day with the church doing odd jobs for folks, but I'll put the shaft back on the granite slab and verify it isn't bent.

Tinman, thank you for the offer and another gent sent me a PM with a similar offer.

Once I double check the shaft is not bent, I'll order the chuck. Even though the chuck should be 5mm, I'm sure its better to have the parts in hand first. Hopefully, I'll check things out tonight.

[Mr_Mike]

OK, so its been a few months...

Firstly, I'd like to thank a couple of forum members who offered their services for free if I needed them. That was much appreciated and I know they have done the same for others and that is part of what makes on-line communities like this special.

The photobucket links above don't seem to work anymore, so I'll post a couple of before shots...






This is the end result. As it turns out, just after I got this, I changed jobs and one of my co-workers has a full machine shop in his garage. Of course, I started traveling a lot and we couldn't hook up for a long while.

I went to his house last night and in 30 minutes, the shaft was cleaned up to 5mm and the chuck was installed. No pics of the shaft machining unfortunately. But it runs true.

The shaft was bent, but bent below the lower bearing surface and we (like I helped) were able to machine it true and turn it down to 5mm to fit the replacement taper adapter and chuck.

Now all I need is a project to use it with.

[BloomingtonMike]

Make you want a metal lathe yet? They are flipping awesome machines with some sweet tooling!

DP looks great.

[Mr_Mike]

The fellow had a Hardinge lathe with significant age on it and every piece of tooling known to man from what I could see. 3 phase with a rotary phase converter over in the corner servicing several tools.

He said that using the Hardinge was basically cheating as it took a lot of the headache out of running a lathe.

From what I saw, it was pretty trivial to do.