Air Drill/Level

[nat_wheatley]

Do I need to level/plumb my air drills (is it even possible?). I put a small level on the blocks that house the drills, and they weren't level, but that's not the actual drill body, so I'm not sure whether the drill itself is our or not.

Also, when I'm drilling there is a small wobble to the chuck, not sure if that's normal or not. I've haven't used the second drill yet to see if it does the same.

[Gary Campbell]

Nat...
Every little bit helps. The Drill instruction PFD: http://www.shopbottools.com/files/docs/SBG00330071031PRSalphaAirDrill.pdf shows using a square between the table bed & the -X face of the drill bracket. This makes the drill perpendicular to the table in the X direction. You might also want to turn it sideways and make sure that the drill(s) are perpendicular in the Y direction also.

Gary

[wberminio]

Nat

As far as the play in the cylinder,call support and have them send you a special thin wrench to tighten
the cylinder.This will allow you to tighten the bearings.

You're almost there-Get ready for a great ride!

Erminio

[nat_wheatley]

Gary and Erminio, thanks. I'll square the drills tommorrow.

I'm slowly getting closer to getting things set up correctly. Added to the learning curve is that I work in metric which has caused a few glitches, but they're ironed out for now.

I was cutting parts today and had to discipline myself to keep moving and not just stand and watch the machine!

[Gary Campbell]

Nat, while you are at it, check the spindle too. Its nice to know its right on after moving the machine around for a bit. Use a framing square in both directions off the table, similar to the drill squaring.
Gary

[nat_wheatley]

I did square it in the Y direction, but not the X. I was in the process of building the vaccum table and had run a surfacing routine both before and after. There was a noticeble decrease in the tool marks left afterwards. I was using an 1 1/4" bit.

I hadn't considered squaring it in the X direction, as I wasn't sure I could adjust if it were off. I'll take a closer look, as the ridges that were left on the table showed that it was slightly off in that direction.

[Gary Campbell]

Nat...
Adjusting the spindle in the X direction is much more involved than the Y. It involves loosening the 8 bolts on each end of the Y extrusion, and 10 bolts on each of the Y extrusion gussets, then tweaking the extrusion to vertical, (at the spindle) then careful reassembly including a resquaring of the X car to the travel.

Its a fairly involved project, but none the less, one you will want to do at some time to insure top cutting quality and perfectly square panels.

Besides panels that are less than .015 difference across the diamonds, we can now surface the table with 2.25 stepover, 8 ips and no "lap marks". We do use David Buchsbaum's surfacer (modified of course) and surface only in the X direction. We never could get good results using the OEM CR version that cuts in all 4 directions.

Gary