Sean Tracey
12-13-2008, 11:22 PM
I recently bought a Delta 17-959L. It drills excellent and I love the overall layout of the various controls and I love the table. It does however, have some quality issues from both a design and from a manufacturing stand point that detract from a mostly well designed machine. I am fairly sure I can fix the worst of these. I recommend the machine, but some buyer's should read and decide for themselves. Also, Delta doesn't have much to do to make the machine excellent in all regards.
Initially, I tried to buy it at a local Woodcraft. The salesman was uninformed and very annoying. As I was looking at the different drill presses, he made lots of useless comments and was really just bugging me. It's a shame that The Cutting Edge across the street is going out of business. All of this is only useful if you shop for woodworking tools on the south side of Houston. I looked at the Steel City as it get's rave reviews here, but I didn't find it very appealing as far as one could check it out on a retail store floor. Woodcraft had all the drill presses crammed together so you were somewhat hampered in checking them out.
I found it much easier to change speeds on the V-belts fitted to the Delta and I liked the big belt tension knob on the Delta better. The Steel City has a larger diameter quill and a longer stroke, but I found the Delta's adequate.
What I really liked about the Delta was the table. Easy to adjust to an angle, although the vast majority of holes will be drilled at 90 degrees.
So I ordered the Delta. The salesman informed me it would be about a week for delivery. I didn't get a call after a week, and my credit card had been charged, so I called the store only to be told that Woodcraft had none in stock and wouldn't get any until January. I cancelled the order and bought from Amazon and received the machine in a week.
The packaging was a cardboard box and styrofoam completely inadequate for shipping a 200lb item. The foam was broken and as a consequence the plastic belt drive top had a small piece broken off the front. It is serviceable but the packaging is really just plain ignorant. I doubt I will bother calling for a replacement.
I put the machine together without difficulty. There were a few things I did not like however. The bearing surfaces of the table that attach it to the post were painted and the bearing surface of the table trunions that allow it to tilt were also painted. Luckily, the paint wasn't adhered all that well and I scrapped it off with a razor blade followed by a light hand brushing with WD40 and a brass wire brush. The bearing surface where the table attaches to the post had several surface dings that I quickly knocked down with a fine mill file. Knocking down the high spots is all that is required and it took little time to do so. Better packaging would have most likely made this unnecessary. Also, I doubt the table would have worked nicely and squared up as nice had I not scrapped the paint off of the bearing surfaces. Lot's of people wouldn't know to do this and probably have a much worse impression of the machine than is otherwise deserved.
I used a hoist to put the head of the machine on the post. If I didn't have a hoist, I probably would have inserted the post into the head of the machine and then lifted the head and post together. Either way you have to be very careful as it is pretty heavy.
It came with a laser. I actually make a laser alignment system at work, but generally, I consider lasers on most power tools kind of useless. I didn't even put the one on my Bosch SCMS because it is just way too easy and accurate to touch the blade to pencil mark. The laser is very bright and of decent projection quality. Adjusting it is very clumsy since you have to remove a cover to adjust them and the act of reinstalling the cover affects the alignment. It is tedious to get the lasers accurately aligned and is more of a process of trial and error. I was able to get it extremely close and probably accurate enough, but having worked with CNC machinery, I like things to be damn near perfect. I have fitted the table with a Woodpeckers drill press table top that I absolutely love. I find the laser useful for resetting the table in position after moving it around. Also, the laser uses 120v power instead of a battery which moves it out of gimmick zone like those fitted on SCMS. Still, it would be nice if you could adjust the thing without having to uninstall and reinstall the covers which serve to hold the lasers in place.
I set the table at 90 degrees to the drill using a dial indicator and got the surface of the table running within 0.020" as indicated on a circle of 8 inches in diameter. I could have possibly cut this in half, but it is unnecessary to do so. There is a threaded stud with a single lock nut provided for the purpose of giving a 90 degree stop. A better choice would have been to provide an allen head bolt with a lock nut. This would have cost nothing and make it very easy to set the table stop exactly. I guess I will have to make a trip to the hardware store for a metric allen head. I will be able to get that 0.020" runout down to 0.010 easily after that.
The spindle runs very nicely with no noticeable runout when drilling holes. The quil feeds nicely throughout it's range with just a slight stickiness when it goes back to the very top. I think that's caused mostly by excess grease. The quil feed has nice big knobs and a quil stop is provided which is handy when using a dial indicator to set the table. As far as drilling goes, the machine is excellent.
The pulleys are another matter. They cause lots of vibration at higher speeds which does not affect the quality of the drilling but causes things to vibrate off the table and is bad enough that the vibration will prematurely wear out the spindel. The main culprit is the pulley on the drilling spindel. It has over 0.020 runout and can be seen wobbling all over the place. I suspect that the individual belt surfaces are O.K. but that the part was not properly aligned to these surfaces when it was bored. I will most likely remove the pulley, take it to work (I own a machine shop) align to the smallest and larges diameter belt surfaces. If they are running decently true, then I will bore it out, reweld the bore at both ends and rebore the welded ends back to proper diameter. I won't know if this is possible until I remove the pulley. Alternatively, I may rebush the bore instead of welding.
I will also probalby use linked belts as the various pulley's seem to have imperfect alignment depending on the speeds chosen.
The last criticism is of the motor bracket and the bores for rods holding it. The mechanism for adjusting the belts works nicely, but the rods slide in holes bored directly into the casting. The casting where the holes are bored is relatively thin and provides little bushing surface area and the holes are bored too loosely so the motor can tilt quite a bit when you tighten the belt tension. There isn't much I can do about this, although I will say that the tilt probaly only occurs if you over tighten the belt tension. I have been stopping just short of the tilt when adjusting tension but I haven't turned anything bigger than a 7/8" forstner bit into some western red cedar. Anyway, the holes are too sloppy and the casting is too thin to provide a decent bushing area.
All in all, I like the machine. My major complaint is the pulley. I would have still bought the machine over the Steel City, because of the nice table and the overall design of the machine. The Delta has a lot going for it, a few minor corrections to quality control would make the machine much better. Next time I am in a store, I guarantee you I will look a Steel City over to see how their pulleys and tension adjustment work.
Initially, I tried to buy it at a local Woodcraft. The salesman was uninformed and very annoying. As I was looking at the different drill presses, he made lots of useless comments and was really just bugging me. It's a shame that The Cutting Edge across the street is going out of business. All of this is only useful if you shop for woodworking tools on the south side of Houston. I looked at the Steel City as it get's rave reviews here, but I didn't find it very appealing as far as one could check it out on a retail store floor. Woodcraft had all the drill presses crammed together so you were somewhat hampered in checking them out.
I found it much easier to change speeds on the V-belts fitted to the Delta and I liked the big belt tension knob on the Delta better. The Steel City has a larger diameter quill and a longer stroke, but I found the Delta's adequate.
What I really liked about the Delta was the table. Easy to adjust to an angle, although the vast majority of holes will be drilled at 90 degrees.
So I ordered the Delta. The salesman informed me it would be about a week for delivery. I didn't get a call after a week, and my credit card had been charged, so I called the store only to be told that Woodcraft had none in stock and wouldn't get any until January. I cancelled the order and bought from Amazon and received the machine in a week.
The packaging was a cardboard box and styrofoam completely inadequate for shipping a 200lb item. The foam was broken and as a consequence the plastic belt drive top had a small piece broken off the front. It is serviceable but the packaging is really just plain ignorant. I doubt I will bother calling for a replacement.
I put the machine together without difficulty. There were a few things I did not like however. The bearing surfaces of the table that attach it to the post were painted and the bearing surface of the table trunions that allow it to tilt were also painted. Luckily, the paint wasn't adhered all that well and I scrapped it off with a razor blade followed by a light hand brushing with WD40 and a brass wire brush. The bearing surface where the table attaches to the post had several surface dings that I quickly knocked down with a fine mill file. Knocking down the high spots is all that is required and it took little time to do so. Better packaging would have most likely made this unnecessary. Also, I doubt the table would have worked nicely and squared up as nice had I not scrapped the paint off of the bearing surfaces. Lot's of people wouldn't know to do this and probably have a much worse impression of the machine than is otherwise deserved.
I used a hoist to put the head of the machine on the post. If I didn't have a hoist, I probably would have inserted the post into the head of the machine and then lifted the head and post together. Either way you have to be very careful as it is pretty heavy.
It came with a laser. I actually make a laser alignment system at work, but generally, I consider lasers on most power tools kind of useless. I didn't even put the one on my Bosch SCMS because it is just way too easy and accurate to touch the blade to pencil mark. The laser is very bright and of decent projection quality. Adjusting it is very clumsy since you have to remove a cover to adjust them and the act of reinstalling the cover affects the alignment. It is tedious to get the lasers accurately aligned and is more of a process of trial and error. I was able to get it extremely close and probably accurate enough, but having worked with CNC machinery, I like things to be damn near perfect. I have fitted the table with a Woodpeckers drill press table top that I absolutely love. I find the laser useful for resetting the table in position after moving it around. Also, the laser uses 120v power instead of a battery which moves it out of gimmick zone like those fitted on SCMS. Still, it would be nice if you could adjust the thing without having to uninstall and reinstall the covers which serve to hold the lasers in place.
I set the table at 90 degrees to the drill using a dial indicator and got the surface of the table running within 0.020" as indicated on a circle of 8 inches in diameter. I could have possibly cut this in half, but it is unnecessary to do so. There is a threaded stud with a single lock nut provided for the purpose of giving a 90 degree stop. A better choice would have been to provide an allen head bolt with a lock nut. This would have cost nothing and make it very easy to set the table stop exactly. I guess I will have to make a trip to the hardware store for a metric allen head. I will be able to get that 0.020" runout down to 0.010 easily after that.
The spindle runs very nicely with no noticeable runout when drilling holes. The quil feeds nicely throughout it's range with just a slight stickiness when it goes back to the very top. I think that's caused mostly by excess grease. The quil feed has nice big knobs and a quil stop is provided which is handy when using a dial indicator to set the table. As far as drilling goes, the machine is excellent.
The pulleys are another matter. They cause lots of vibration at higher speeds which does not affect the quality of the drilling but causes things to vibrate off the table and is bad enough that the vibration will prematurely wear out the spindel. The main culprit is the pulley on the drilling spindel. It has over 0.020 runout and can be seen wobbling all over the place. I suspect that the individual belt surfaces are O.K. but that the part was not properly aligned to these surfaces when it was bored. I will most likely remove the pulley, take it to work (I own a machine shop) align to the smallest and larges diameter belt surfaces. If they are running decently true, then I will bore it out, reweld the bore at both ends and rebore the welded ends back to proper diameter. I won't know if this is possible until I remove the pulley. Alternatively, I may rebush the bore instead of welding.
I will also probalby use linked belts as the various pulley's seem to have imperfect alignment depending on the speeds chosen.
The last criticism is of the motor bracket and the bores for rods holding it. The mechanism for adjusting the belts works nicely, but the rods slide in holes bored directly into the casting. The casting where the holes are bored is relatively thin and provides little bushing surface area and the holes are bored too loosely so the motor can tilt quite a bit when you tighten the belt tension. There isn't much I can do about this, although I will say that the tilt probaly only occurs if you over tighten the belt tension. I have been stopping just short of the tilt when adjusting tension but I haven't turned anything bigger than a 7/8" forstner bit into some western red cedar. Anyway, the holes are too sloppy and the casting is too thin to provide a decent bushing area.
All in all, I like the machine. My major complaint is the pulley. I would have still bought the machine over the Steel City, because of the nice table and the overall design of the machine. The Delta has a lot going for it, a few minor corrections to quality control would make the machine much better. Next time I am in a store, I guarantee you I will look a Steel City over to see how their pulleys and tension adjustment work.