Friday, August 14, 2009

Problems Drilling Leg Pipes

The good news is that I drilled the holes for the bolts that lock the leg pipes together. The bad news is, apparently my drill press is in worse shape than I realized. Allow me to elaborate...

I decided to sink five 5/16" bolts into the pipes that will lock the legs together. Every other bolt is to be perpendicular to the adjacent bolt.

I clamped a couple of flat boards in the front and back of the legs to ensure the legs were pointing in the same direction, and then I set the whole thing up tenuously on the drill press.



Time to start drilling. Three bolts in this direction, being carful not to drill where the U-bolt will rest on the pipe.



In order to drill the next two holes perpendicular to the first three, I had to reorient everything. At least I know the reflector on the Droidmobile is effective!



Five bolts later and... the legs wiggle like crazy!!!



I think that the chuck on my drill press is too wobbly from the years of abuse I've put it through. It seems my 5/16" holes are bigger than 11/32", but smaller than 3/8". I'm thinking of widening each hole with a hand drill to 3/8" and moving up to 3/8" bolts, but I want to be sure that it's simply the hole size that is causing so much play (not sure what else it could be, but I want to verify). This worked so well when I went back and added extra bolts for droid #1 not too long ago. Hmm.

2 comments:

Matthew Henricks said...

Victor,

Probably one too many booster cover sanding jobs. :)

Grab hold of the spindle of course when it is not spinning and pull back and forth. I bet you have alot of side to side slop in the quill. Not that uncommon. That will cause your holes to be sloppy. You can probably re-drill them but make sure your legs are clamped in place as you may still get some waling as the new drill tries to find the right centerling.

Victor Franco said...

Thanks Matthew. I'm sure the booster cover sanding is a big contributer. I will likely follow your advice for redrilling. Fortunately I have plenty of space if I need to drill brand new holes as well. I would start by rotating the pipe 90 degrees before picking new spots on the pipe. We shall see though.

Heck, Harbor Freight regularly puts this drill press on sale for $40.00, it's practically disposable!

-Victor