Make A PVC Drill Press

There are two types of people in this world: people who think that PVC is only suitable for plumbing, and people who don’t even know that you can use PVC to carry water. Instructables user [amjohnny] is clearly of the latter school. His PVC Dremel drill press is a bit of an oldie, but it’s still a testament to the pipefitter’s art. And you can watch it in action in the video embedded below.

Things we particularly like about this build include the PVC parallelogram movement, springs around tubes to push the Dremel head back up, and the clever use of a T-fitting and screw plug to hold the press in its lowest position. We wonder how one could add a depth stop to this thing. No matter, we love watching it work.

Anyway, this is just one hack of many that emphasizes the importance of a drill press in basically anyone’s life, as well as the ease of DIY’ing into one. If you’re in the PVC-haters camp, but have some scrap wood and drawer slides or plastic offcuts lying around, you have the makings of a rudimentary press — a welcome tool in the shop.

Thanks [Itay] for the tip!

32 thoughts on “Make A PVC Drill Press

  1. PVC pipe is like Lego, there are gobs of adapters and unlike Lego it is cheap. Just remember that it has mechanical and pressure limitations, engineer within those limits and it is pretty useful building blocks especially combined with laser cutting and 3d printing for larger ‘thing’ builds. I place it in a similar category to a backyard bamboo patch for cheap lightweight build stock.

  2. Except bamboo is orders of magnitude stiffer, arguably stronger. PVC uniform, thermoplastic, very high elasticity, incredible pressure tank capability, high resistance to solvents. Different materials better used together than separate. Someone please build a PVC/bamboo potato cannon!

      1. There’s quite a few projects where people use resin and fiberglass or carbon fiber with traditional standard lashing patterns. Though it’s not strictly necessary. Lots of places still use bamboo as scaffolding with few accidents relating to the bamboo.

  3. Adding a depth stop should be trivial. A ring/removable clamp with a stop-screw below the sliding part of the handle. Even pre-cut lengths of PVC pipe to quickly snap on as predefined depth stops.

  4. It’s always hard to find the right spring when you conceptualize something like this.
    In this case he uses springs from a “4” sprinkler body” And you just have to coincidentally know that has the springs you want.

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