I recently purchased a Vevor Magnetic Drill (Mag Drill), and I decided to make a stand to use it as a traditional drill press. I used a ton of tools including the Bauer 5-3/8 in. Metal Cutting Circular Saw, Benchmark Abrasives grinder wheels, and my Titanium Mig 170 Welder, also from Harbor Freight.
Transcript:
Vevor Magnetic Drill Press Improvements
This will be the first project for the Vevor Mag Drill. I’m not a fan of walking back and forth to my drill press, so this will help it function as a traditional drill press for small parts.
The basic concept is to provide a shelf that the magnet came hold onto, and then use a drill press vice to hold the part. I’m not sure if I want to use a 2″ or 3″ drill press vise, so I’m going to make sure I have a little room to accommodate either one.
Vevor recommends 10mm or 0.393701 inches under the magnet. I’m going to use some 3/8 plate and we’ll hope for the best. I’m using 5/16ths x 2 1/2 flat bar for the sides, which is major overkill, but right now, it’s the only thing I have over 2″. (that’s what she said)
Cutting the Steel for the Base
I started off by marking out my sheet metal for the base plate. I used a combination square and a scribe to mark my dimensions. I don’t have an oxy acetylene torch or a plasma cutter yet, so we’re going to give it a shot with the Bauer Metal Circular Saw. My local Harbor Freight was out of the blades for this saw, so I purchased one from Benchmark Abrassives.
These cuts took forever and were painfully slow. I’m sure the Benchmark Abrassives blades work fine for other saws, but I’d definitely stay away from it for this particular saw. I’ve since bought the hercules cermet carbide blade and it’s a major improvement.
I double-checked the blade, made sure the saw was spinning correctly, made sure it wasn’t wobbling, swapped to a fresh battery, tried raising and lower the cutting depth, but nothing really helped. This is the saw cutting in real time through 1/8 inch or 11 gauge mild steel. I promise I’ll speed up the cuts from now on.
A by-product of a steel cutting blade is tons of small metal chips everywhere… and I mean everywhere. I vacummed them up here, but I quickly bought a rolling magnet. I knew something was up with this blade because all of my chips were coming off super discolored and the base metal was heating up.
Annnnd, I lied, but hey, it looks cool in slow motion, right guys? Guys? C’mon it was 120fps… doesn’t that count for something?
Welding the Mag Drill Stand
I decided to slightly bevel my pieces so that the weld would sit flatter. I planned on grinding it down flush, so I wanted to have a little bit of the weld stick after I finished grinding.
Also, for all my welding inspectors, yes, this isn’t how you weld 3/8ths plate to 5/16s. But hear me out for a second, it’s a shelf… for a drill.
Okay so I put small tacks on the base and regretted using magnets. I should’ve setup a fixture, but I fixed it with a bar clamp.
Comment down below and let me know if you enjoy seeing these split screen versions. Or if you don’t care. Or if yah like dogs. Eh, I’ll take anything at this point in my YouTube career.
After welding the shelf together, I made sure to test fit everything before committing to welding it out.
Here’s the fixture I should’ve made earlier. Because I beveled my material, when I make the welds on the top, I know that it will pull the bottom of the feet outwards. The one corner was a little off 90 degrees, so I left a little space for expansion. And I made sure to get these stops down nice and tight. And here’s my visual inspection face.
I purposely traveled too fast with these welds so I didn’t pour a ton of heat into the steel. These welds are partially to hold it together and also to fill up the crack so I can grind it flush.
One benefit to having two camera angles is that it’s a lot harder for me to block them both at once. And the flickering is due to me trying to apply too much knowledge to videography, and in turn, getting a crappy result. I’ll try not to let it happen again after this video.
Here’s what happens when you don’t do a dry run before welding. I think I caught my resting hand on one of the stops and-yeah, there it is.
Grinding the Welds Flat
When grinding welds down I use a ceramic flap disk. This is due to my lovely health condition called psoriatic arthritis. If I use a hard wheel, I use more grip strength holding it steady so it doesn’t bounce around. I can do it, but then my joints swell and my hand hurts for several hours. Hopefully this explains my weird method of holding the grinder. This flap disk is from Benchmark Abrasives (Single – Amazon Pack), and I’ll link it in the description.
Here’s why I always leave the guards on for all of my grinders. It’s an important safety feature that helps to prevent major injuries to the operator – and I’m done bullshitting. I’m impatient and like to throw them down as soon as possible. The new version of the Bauer grinder has a brake on it, but my older ones don’t, so, at this point it’s just habit and I can switch back and forth faster.
I quickly rounded over my corners and removed my initial tacks. I checked my joint to see if it moved after the welds cooled. Everything looked good, so I kept moving forward.
I used a striping disk to clean up my baseplate. This is also from Benchmark Abrasives. I use them to clean up rust, paint, mill scale, and to smooth out rough scratches.
Centering and Leveling the Shelf
There isn’t an easy way to mark the center of the shelf, so I used some 1-2-3 blocks and eyeballed it off the edge of the base plate.
Here comes the most complicated part of the project. I wanted to make the shelf as level as possible. Flat isn’t really an option since I’m using hot rolled steel, but I’d prefer to have less of an angle on everything I drill with it.
I adjusted my table as level as I could get it, and used multiple levels to figure out which direction it needed to go. I decided to do the front two tacks first, as it was almost perfect side-to-side. This raised the backend of the shelf, and I could easily adjust it down with a clamp.
I shimmed under the back of the shelf to minimize how far the weld could pull it down. With all of these welds, I’m trying to concentrate more on the 5/16ths side and less on the 1/8″ baseplate. I wanted to keep the plate as flat as possible, so I clamped wherever I could around the perimeter and waited until everything cooled to remove my clamps.
After I finish a weld, you’ve probably noticed I leave my nozzle over it for a couple seconds. I’m only running around 13 cubic feet per hour, so I try and get as much coverage as I can. I used to run 20-25 CFH, but then I found a video showing how little you can get away with in a closed environment.
You definitely have to be careful running this little of shielding gas, and it also depends what type of joints you’re welding. Check out my shop tour to get a better idea of my setup.
I decided to clamp up a bunch of different sizes of material. This helped me figure out where I should put the threaded studs to hold down the vice.
That’s all for part 1, let me know your thoughts in the comments. I’ll try and get part two out in the next few weeks. And please, please be sure to like and subscribe