Drill Clamp Modification

A little while ago I was fortunate enough to get a new drill press that was a lot bigger and stronger than my old one, I took the chance to buy a couple of cheap drill clamps I found online only to discover they weren't compatible with the bed on my drill press. I haven't used them since but decided it's time to finally modify them to fit.

• Cheap-o Drill Press Clamp (Or just buy the correct one for your drill press)
• Scrap metal to make T-Nut
• Drill
• Grinder
• File
• M14 Tap and Tap Wrench

Using a piece of scrap metal I made two T-Slot Nuts. I started by marking out the dimensions and then used an angle grinder and hacksaw to get the basic shape cut out. I then filed and sanded the rough edges off, drilled a 12mm hole through the centre and taped it out to an M14-size thread.

The size of this nut is based on my drill press, so it's worth measuring your own in case it's different.

I now measured the depth of the slot on the drill press so I could figure out how long the clamp bolt needed to be.

I secured the clamp in the vice and then wrapped some masking tape around the bolt so I could easily mark where I wanted to cut the bolt. I then used the angle grinder to cut the bolt to the correct length.

Whenever you cut a bolt or threaded rod it damages the thread and you need to clean this up, while you can just file this down I used a flap-disc to smooth the end over.

I then tested that I could easily twist on a nut to make sure it was corrected.

It worked well and I now have two usable drill press clamps. Well worth the effort to create something that might save my fingers from a spinning chunk of metal.