Drill into spindle body to mount air drill ??

[kshirey]

I'll begin by stipulating that I'm insane, wanting to drill into my brand new spindle body.

I want to mount a shop-built air drill onto my HSD 2.2HP spindle, and have come up with a couple of possibilities:

1.) Create a clamp-fit mount to engage the round part of the spindle beneath the body. This is not my favorite option due to slippage concers.

2.) Find a way to mount a "cradle" behind the spindle. More accurate, but very cumbersome and time consuming to build

3.) Attach the drill mount directly to the spindle. Gary Campbell has one that looks like he drilled/tapped/mounted it directly to the spindle body. I'm interested in this concept, and was curious to know if anyone has done it, knows where to drill (and where not to) and how satisfied they were with the outcome.

Thanks in advance!

[Brady Watson]

Have a look at the ShopBot Air Drill & how it is mounted via their website. The AL plate that attaches the spindle to the Z axis is tapped and a cage that goes around the spindle to mount the air dill bolts to it. NOTHING is or should be attached to the spindle housing itself! Baaaad News!

-B

[harryball]

I drilled my 4 HP HSD to install a front mount DC bracket... I'm insane too ;-)

/RB

[bcammack]

I made a jacket of 1/16" aluminum that wrapped around a 5HP Colombo and then used some 1/4" threaded rod as pinch bolts to secure it when I fabbed up a new dust collector foot setup.

Perhaps you could wrap your HSD in a similar fashion to provide mount points for the bracketry.

[Gary Campbell]

Guys...
Thought I better weigh in here. Yes I did drill and tap the air chambers on the spindle to mount a drill. I did this before the SB PRS drill was available and without checking to see if doing that would void my warrantee. I would reccommend looking into the ShopBot mounts and checking out the warrantee implications before drilling into a spindle case.
Gary