Drill Press quill shaft vertical play

[John Kananis]

I have a 16.5" Delta drill press (model #17-965) and I suddenly have quite a bit of vertical movement in the quill shaft - about 3/8" up and down. I'm a little stumped on how to address this so any help is appreciated. I'm attaching some pics of the shaft seated all the way up and the gap caused when its "pulled down". The second set of pics are of the forward pulley, you'll notice the shaft protrude a bit more in the one pic.

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Not sure why they're coming up sideways - sorry about that.

[Jamie Buxton]

Dunno about your machine, but in many drill presses, the chuck fastens to a shaft which connects up to machine above it with a Morse taper. Perhaps that Morse taper connection is loosening.

[John Gustafson]

From the looks of it, with motion in both the chuck end and the pulley end of the shaft I would suspect something with the quill bearings. There are two in there and there is at least one sort of threaded fastener that ties the whole shaft assembly to the housing. Morse taper being loose possibly but if it were I would expect the whole thing to fall out. Take the pulley off of the shaft and see what happens. Could be that's all that's keeping the shaft from falling out. Other possibility is a bad bearing. The other place that might be suspect is the rack and pinion assembly that is part of the vertical motion drive. Any free-play in there would give you a similar condition.

[Bill Dufour]

Bearings are bad or at least loose. Likely the lower bearing is locked in place and the top bearing floats up and down with heat.See if the driven pulley can be screwed down to remove the slop. Or remove the driven pulley and see if there is a lock ring/colalr under it that can be screwed in tighter.
Bill D

[Donald G. Burns]

Is there a missing/broken thrust bearing or washer?

[John Kananis]

Thanks for the replies, gentlemen. Nothing obviously broken or missing and no vertical play at all.

I really don't have the time to tear this thing down right now so I going to throw a 5/8" stop collar on top of the pulley shaft and get back to it when I can.