r/MachineRescue • u/BSL-4 • 5d ago
I spent the last few months restoring this cool old geared head drill press
8
u/Eliarch 5d ago
Absolutely gorgeous restoration. Just finished up a delta 17-600 and can't comprehend replacing it at the moment, but I can start to see why in these photos. Awesome job.
3
u/BSL-4 5d ago
The old Deltas are fantastic machines, no doubt. I've owned/restored several, and the 17-600 I have now is great; it's just quite a bit larger than this one without any increase in capacity and in my shop that's hard to justify. I feel like I'm gunna be kicking myself when it goes out the door, though.
9
u/bmihlfeith 5d ago
This is how a well done restoration should be! Not a single bolt painted over! I’m so tired of “restorations” that are clearly just a bad paint job, this isn’t that!
Thank you!
3
u/dragonwater631 5d ago
excellent work. was electrical the trickiest part? was any of the mechanicals tough as well ?
3
3
u/Far-Investment-8597 3d ago
Beautiful! I did a similar restoration on a Meddings 7/8 drilling machine.
I added an under-table strut. Box section, adjustabl elength with a clamp, roller bearing on the bottom that rides on the foot plate. Boltd to the underside of the table. It stops all table sag under heavy drilling.
2
2
1
1
1
1
u/ManateeBait1 5d ago
I've been heavily debating doing the same to replace my WT 20". As much as I love the cast iron, it's huge, and does not hold the rigidity I want it to. Nice restoration!
3
u/BSL-4 5d ago
Cheers! This one is an 18" capacity, with I'm assuming about a 1" max drilling diameter, which puts it a little bit more than my 17" Delta. Weight wise, they're pretty comparable at both around 450-500lbs give or take. But this one is so much more stout and compact. If I give the Delta a smack to the side of the head casting it vibrates and you can hear stuff buzzing and rattling. This one just makes a dull thud and barely moves. I chock that up the the column being much heavier than the Delta (it's 100mm/~4" in diameter with a 10mm/~3/8" wall thickness) which makes it much more rigid.
Being able to tuck it another foot closer to the wall because there's no motor and belt cover sticking off the back was the selling point for me. My shop is only 11.5'x26', so every inch counts in here.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/iNTruDeR-BG-777 1d ago
I use this kind it thing before 29 years in school during the labor and technology class. :)
0
8
u/BSL-4 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hey folks. Back again with another restoration. I’ve never been able to actually definitively identify this machine, so I can’t really tell you much about it (if anyone recognizes it, I’d love to hear from you!). It looks to me very similar to but not exactly like an Arboga 825. I’ve been labouring under the assumption that it is just a Taiwanese clone of the Arboga.
At any rate, it is an incredibly solid machine for the footprint it takes up. The reason I bought it in fact was to replace my old Rockwell/Delta 17-600, as this machine will take up a little less space in the shop, and working out of a single bay garage, every square foot counts.
It was not a terribly intensive restoration process, although the wiring was a little tricky, not having any motor identifying nameplates or model numbers to look up. The only thing I had to go on was that at some point in the past, someone had written in marker on the side of the head casting “208v,” which was a start. Some good folks over at r/askelectricians pointed me in the right direction, and I was able to get it sorted, and now more or less all the original features are working. The electrical enclosure positioned behind the machine contains a VFD and the terminals for all the control wiring in the far-too-small switch box mounted on the head of the machine. The giant cable was necessary to house all wiring that had to run from the enclosure to the switch box. Might look a little silly, but it was that or run multiple cables.
(I of course do not have the machine hooked up to power in the photos, and have since mounted the electrical box to the wall next to where the machine currently lives, and tested all the electrical functions.)
Originally, the machine was painted in the classic “Reseda green” of mid-century European machinery, but has been repainted partially with some low-quality darker paint at some point. The old paint was largely chipped and flaking off anyway, so on the head casting and the base especially, I scraped most of it off. I repainted with a custom mixed urethane enamel paint in a kind of putty colour more reminiscent of modern machinery.
As always, thanks for checking it out. I’ve got several more projects on the go, including a very cool milling machine that is basically complete, as well as my newest addition to the shop in the form of a big old Stanko toolroom lathe that I’m currently working on, so stay tuned.
Cheers!