Making a drill press stand

A while ago I found a drill press in our shed, wrapped in plastic. It didn't have a stand or anything though so I put it on the work bench. Recently, a frame became available after the bird cage that it was supporting was seriously upgraded. I quickly put the pieces of this simple puzzle together and hence this blog gets a new entry!

So there were a drill press and a frame. I also found a piece of 4 cm thick wood. Just chipboard but really strong. It had a workable size already, I didn't even have to cut it. How convenient is that?

These are the only things I had to buy: 6 angle brackets and 2 M10 nuts and bolts.

Use the 6 angle brackets to firmly mount the wood to the frame and you end up with a table.

Then use the M10 nuts and bolts to fix the drill press on to the table and you have a nice drill press stand.

Creating a bird cage roof

We got two new bird cages for outside but they don't come with a roof. So we make some ourselves! The roofs are made out of scrap wood except for the panels. I reckon you may have some panels lying around as well though.

The roof is a simple, 90 degree model. Start by making the legs for the frame. Cut one side at a 45 degree angle. You need 4 per roof.

A fancy connection is not required so just put pairs in a vice, drill a hole for the screw and screw the two parts together.

The result should look like this.

Add a few more pieces of scrap wood like in this photo and you got your frame.

Put the panels on. Don't worry if your frame is a bit wobbly. After the panels have been screwed on it will be completely steady.

Paint.

And place on top of the cage.

power supply (now 0.75-30V / 2.7A), part 5.

One last part is needed to put the wires together. Just incase it needed to be taken apart (maybe because things can screw up sometimes? ;-P ) I wanted to be able to de-solder the wires leading to the heat sink from the print board. Therefore I cut out a piece of plexi-glass (I cut a semicircle), drilled some holes in it and mounted solder lugs on them. One for each wire to be connected. After this it was testing time (basically a check to see if nothing explodes ;-).

The piece of plexi-glass is at the front here. Click the picture for a slightly larger, but much clearer version.

The finished back.

The finished front.

Finished from above.

Project completed successfully!