Saturday, July 27, 2024

Getting Strapped

So pretty much every drill press ever made comes with a table with t-nut slots cast or milled into it. Since I now have a drill press, I decided it was high time I got a t-nut strap clamp kit to use with it, because workholding is important.

It's not an especially fancy kit, but it should do just fine for starting out.

Now ideally I'd like to use this kit to help secure at least one corner of my drill press vice.

But unfortunately the shortest stud it comes with is 3 inches long.

So I guess that's a bit of a downside with this kit. Well, it's not hard to order up some shorter studs, at least.

Meanwhile, for those of you not aware, the base of most drill presses also have these curiously shaped slots cut into them.

Which are also t-nut slots, allowing you to swing the table out of the way and gain a few more inches of column space for drilling an extra tall item.

While also being able to hold it securely in place.

The two holes further back, on the other hand, are for bolting the base down to the floor or cabinet that the drill press is sitting on. I'll be making use of those some time in the future once I build a rolling cabinet for this to sit on.

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