Browse our complete collection of benchtop drill press reviews, floor drill guides, chuck & vise setups, and maintenance tips.
Powermatic has a reputation, and it is a specific one: this is the brand you buy when you have decided that a drill press is a lifetime tool and you want the best-built version of it. That reputation is earned, and it comes with a price tag to mat...
The 5-speed drill press is probably the most common type of benchtop press in American home shops, and it is also the most misunderstood. Buyers see the five-speed spec and assume more speeds means more versatility, which is partly true. But the r...
The table crank is the handle you use more than any other on the press, and it fails in slow motion. First it gets a little loose on the shaft, then it slips under load, and one day you crank and the table does not move at all. A drill press crank...
Bearings give you plenty of warning before they fail, if you know the sound. A press that used to spin up silky smooth develops a low rumble, then a whine that rises with speed, and eventually a roughness you can feel in the feed handle. Ignore it...
The press was fine yesterday. Today you push the green button and nothing happens, or it starts and then dies the moment you let go. Before you order anything, a Boky 16mm drill press start switch replacement is worth slowing down on, because the ...
There is a specific kind of tired that comes from spinning a vise handle open and closed a hundred times in an afternoon of repetitive drilling. The Wilton cam action drill press vise is the cure. Instead of threading the jaw open and shut, you sl...
The 8-inch drill press is the one people buy first and argue about most. It is the smallest and least costly of the common benchtop sizes, which makes it either the smart no-frills starter or the machine you outgrow, depending entirely on what you...
Stand next to a real industrial drill press and the first thing you notice is that it barely moves. You lean into the feed handle and the column does not flex, the table does not shudder, and the hole comes out round. That stillness is the whole p...
The stiff, flat-brimmed campaign hat a drill sergeant wears only looks sharp because it is kept shaped, and the tool that keeps it that way is a hat press: a fixture that holds the crown and brim in their correct form while the felt is steamed and...
When a steel fabricator says "drill press" and means something they can carry up a ladder, they are usually talking about a Milwaukee electromagnetic drill. These are not the belt-and-column machines of a woodshop; they are portable mag drills tha...
Let me be straight before the steps: a drill press is not a milling machine, and asking it to mill aluminum is asking a tool built for downward thrust to take side loads it was never designed for. That said, with light cuts, a rigid setup, and rea...
Owning a Powermatic 1200 is owning a piece of American manufacturing history. These machines were built to last generations — and the fact that you need parts means yours is still working, which is exactly the point. Here's how to source what you ...
