How does one go about drilling holes in large pieces of steel? I'm working with 1/4" thick steel between 6 and 12' in length, too long to drill on the milling machine. A punch won't work when i'm drilling square tubing and such.

I've seen those drills with magnetic bases, but they don't seem to be appropriate for drilling smaller holes.

I'm willing to spend up to $1k, as I'll probably be using this tool frequently. Thanks for any suggestions.

A radial arm drill press would be wonderful for this application. They come in all sizes.

If you want something portable, there's no reason a magnetic base drill wouldn't work.

Karl

i have used a milwaukee mag drill for all kinds of stuff and it is great. the chuck only goes down to 3/16 but we took a chuck out of a dead cordless drill so we can chuck the cordless chuck in the mag drill chuck and use bits down to 1/16. i have personally used bits around 1/8 and it works great.

Matt

Thanks for the replies.

The websites that sell the mag drills say it's for 1/2" steel or thicker, but apparently 1/4" is just fine?

One quick and dirty way to do it is turning the head of a bench model drillpress upside down on the column. Stick it under a table with a hole in it and drill upwards. You can drill in the middle of any size or length workpiece you can support.

It can be fun positioning for the holes, but a plumb bob suspended from the ceiling dead center over the spindle takes care of that.


Tiger

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Where is the delete button? The little red X says I do not have permission to access that feature?

DC

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Thanks for the replies.

The websites that sell the mag drills say it's for 1/2" steel or thicker, but apparently 1/4" is just fine?


The problem with most of them, is that they were made for large diameter drilling. That puts the RPMs below 600, with an average of 450RPM.

Milwaukee does have a base, but that alone is around $900. The drill motor would add another $300-$500 from them. You could mount your own with a higher RPM, I suppose. Not very effective for anything less than a 1/2" bit.

Milwaukee Base (http://www.powertoolservices.com/Tools/4203.htm)

This is more like it, but no price listed.

Comeq M-100D (http://www.comeq.com/Nitto/nitto_M-100D.htm)

DC

Use your milling machine and reposition your part.
If your holes need ro be accurate center to center this is the best method.
Lets say you can drill two holes using the travel of your X axis - do it. Move your X axis back to the position of the first hole -use a pin the diameter of the hole - slide your part down and drop the pin in the last drilled hole - reclamp the part - repeat from the top of these procedures.

Working along this same principle - you can make a fixture with an alignment pin (sized as above) and clamp it to 1 end of the table - have your head beside it the distance of your hole centers - drill hole - slide part untill it fixtures in your drop pin - repeat.

You will need support stands for the overhanging material in both of these cases.

You didn't specify what size drill, what kind of steel and how wide the material is.