Air drill

[gene]

Hi all,
I was wondering if anyone is using the air drill attachment on their bot , how it works for them and how hard is it to mount to the bot> also hoy do you zero the drill and the spindle bit?
Does it save enough time that makes it economical to purchase?
Thanks for your input... Gene Rhodes

[cip]

I have the air drill and think it's worth every penny. I do California type closet systems and with all the holes for shelf adjustment it's well worth the money. It drills 165 holes per piece with 4 pieces per sheet of material, 520 holes total, in about 18 minutes, all in perfect alignment. Mounting was easy with supplied instructions. Alignment to the spindle head was also quite simple.

Mike

[steve4460]

Hi Mike

Do you have some pictures to post here about that drill ?. How is it hooked up?.

[cip]

Air drill hookup is pretty easy using the supplied instructions.


13835.jpg

Mike

[joe]

Mike,

What is the advantage of air drill? How much noise is there? Does it have power?

I'm suspecious this is a specialty tool.

J

[richards]

Let's see if I understand the concept of the air-drill. It seems that the operator sets the drill bit to a specific height and then adjusts mechanical stops on the drill to determine the Z-depth. I don't believe that there is a 'normal' Z-axis height control to change the depth from hole to hole. The air-drill seems to be attached to an air cylinder that is either up or down. In other words, if I were using the air-drill to place 5mm shelf-pins holes in a cabinet part, I would adjust mechanical stops on the drill so that all 5mm holes would be drilled to a pre-set depth when the air-drill was commanded to be in the 'down' position. If I wanted to drill some of the holes at -0.25 inches and some of the holes at -0.50 inches, I would have to run two separate programs and manually adjust the air-drill mechanical stops as I ran each program.

Is this the way that the air-drill works?

[imacarver]

We have an air drill on our Shopbot. It appears pretty simple to install and easy to use. The unit looks just like a conventional pneumatic drill yet it is mounted to a moving carriage. I believe you can only specify a certian z-depth and instead of servo drives like on the spindle, an air piston drives the head up/down. We have not used this feature yet but plan to try it soon.