Portable Drill Press for Makita DHP480 and similar

This portable drill press is designed for Makita DHP480 18V Cordless Drill. The drill is attached to the drill press sled from the conical torque setting ring, as shown in pictures. The torque setting ring in this particular drill model is 54mm diagonal (max) and it has 5 degree taper angle.

Additional hardware required:

2 x 8mm Smooth Rod (optimal length is about 250mm)

2 x LM8UU Linear Ball Bearing

1 x M6x40mm Thumb Screw Bolt

1 x M6 Square Nut, DIN 557 (this might be hard to find… found from Bauhaus)

2 x Compression Spring 100x15x1.5mm (force 1.1kg/cm, seems well enough)

4 x M4 Hexagon Socket Set Screw (optional)

Print Settings: I printed the parts with quite expensive (130€/kg) PA12-CF20 -filament, with 0.6mm nozzle, 0.3mm layer height, 2 wall loops in/out, 3 layers top/bottom and with 30% rectilinear infill pattern. Support structures were not required.

Optional: When there's no possibility to clamp the base to the object you're drilling, baseplate can be slippery (especially when printed from PA) and cause a minor headache. To increase friction and control of drilling, I made separate file for 0.6mm thick underlining, printed it from Filaflex SEBS (TPE-rubber) and glued (Bison® 2K-PU) it to the bottom of baseplate.

The 3D-printed PA-CF parts cost me about 14€. The assembled press is ridiculously lightweight. At the same time it feels stiff enough, and durable. Of course it's not as accurate as real bench drill press, but this is portable and can be used on planes that you can't put on bench drill. With the chosen material, this drill press setup weights only 370g - as a comparison, Makita DHP480 with 4Ah Li-Ion battery pack weights over 5x more, 1890g.

This is a kind of tool you can find from hardware stores for about 20-50€, but the problem is they're mainly built for 43mm standard, cylindrical drill attachment collars and I didn't want to buy a new drill for the task. And when you have this wonderful hobby, you can try to design and make something like this yourself! Sometimes they even do the job properly… XD

To-do: Depth adjustment