Homebrew PCBs

>   Make sure the quill is ok. Some of the HF presses I've seen have 
had 0.020 slop in the quill. Then again, they were not brand new, but 
had been used for drilling metal etc. We had one at the airport, and 
a friend had another one at home. Both were too sloppy for even a 
1/16" drill bit, but worked fine for 1/4" holes etc, and worked well 
for wood. This was a couple years back, and I realize HF changes 
suppliers fairly often, so the new ones may be much better. I buy a 
lot of stuff from them, the carbide pcb drills have been great, as 
have a lot of other items, I'm just a little paranoid about the low 
cost drill press. At $40 its 1/2 the price of a dremel!!!

Good point.  the quill is very sloppy on the HF press, but there is a 
way to increase that accuracy to super presision levels.

mount a shaft on the drill press column and then on that shaft, mount 
a bearing to hold a shaft, and on that shaft mount your tiny drill 
chuck.

the HF press would be the Z axis, and the runout or slop would be 
eleminated by the adapter.  This is how a Jig Bore machine is made 
and those are super accurate.

Also, a magnifying glass mounted on the machine would offer much of 
the visual stuff needed to line up holes.

Dave