Drill small, precise holes (2009) | Hacker News Reader

Drill small, precise holes (2009)

instructables.com

37 pointswalterbell10 comments

Another alternative is a cheap CNC engraving machine. I bought mine a few years ago, assembled, at Microcenter for $200. With this, you can accurately place holes in things, using a similar jig setup to locate the work.

Something like this? https://www.microcenter.com/product/640585/twotrees-cnc-3018...

Mine is a lot cruder, lots of maker rail and bolts.. that looks much nicer (oooh, and cheaper too!)

They all take 1/8" shank bits, which are fairly standard.

I'm hoping that once I can see again, I can use mine to mill out the channels for the tongue and groove on the side of a slide ruler, and to mill out the divisions. A few jigs should make it fairly easy to do.

Intro to X-Y tables, https://blog.roninsgrips.com/put-x-y-table-press-improve-dri...

or you could buy a little x-y table for $50

Hack or buy, the eternal question. One can be stopgap for the other.

Add low-profile drill press vise to address weak clamps in this $35 x-y table, https://www.amazon.com/MultifunctionWorktable-Milling-Compou...

A buy-and-hack mod for $65 X-Y vise, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KXF6CZH/

> The only serious problem with this is the way the compound vise is actually moved. Both screws pass through individual brass pins. Since they are individual, they move freely of each other, affording the bolts a lot of play ... I through drilled both drums simultaneously one on top of the other to keep them aligned and then tapped them. Using a screw, I connected both drums, tightened them solidly, and reinstalled the now one piece compound adjusting drum into the unit. It is now accurate to the thousandth of the inch, no play, no slop. I highly recommend this piece if you are capable of making this modification. It took me no more than 30 mins. to complete the mod and a bit longer to reassemble since I don't look at paperwork for dis or reassembly.

some of the advice applies to x-y tables as well, such as the one about making sure that the drill bit is perfectly centered in the chuck

What is the cost of the whole setup?

Dremel stand ~$50 and handheld rotary tools $50 upward. This DIY setup is an alternative to X-Y tables.

Recent thread on mini drill presses and stands, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31875997

Thanks, that other thread seems more helpful. I own one of those Dremel drill press kits (got it for a song) and wouldn't exactly call it "precision engineered".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com