Floating platform (bed-table) for drill press

grabcad

This is my design for a floating platform (or bed or table) for my drill press.Please take a look at the video for instructions.I have been using my drill press intensively to drill holes on wooden or aluminum brackets after making the parts r drill guides with my CNC machine. One thing that make the process easy is that when the drill bit rotate at high speed and the pieces were floating (not fixed to the drill press's platform), the drill bit will pull the pieces and self-center it-self to the hole. That way, the new holes are at exactly the same position as the guiding holes. I have been quite successful making all the nut housing from angled Aluminum for my CNC machine using this process. But when it comes to drill big holes on aluminum pieces, the piece will vibrate a lot and hard to hold on. The vise is too heavy for the piece to be floating and self-centered to bit.To solve this problem, I designed a floating bed for my drill press so that the piece can be clamped to the platform but the platform can still float in the XY axis very easily.In the end, the platform proved that the principle worked. I tested its function using a 10mm drill bit on a piece of Aluminum to chamfer a 4mm hole. The bit was perfectly centered to the hole and I got exactly the results that I wanted.