I'm interested to see if anyone has come up with a retrofit that will motorize the the rack and pinion crack on a drill press.

I don't have a rack & pinion system on my DP, so I recently added a
cable (attached to the table) and a pulley (attached near the motor)
with some barbell weights on the other end of the cable to
counterweight the table. Not quite perfect, but a heck of a lot easier
than heaving up the table + auxiliary table + fence + clamps, and
trying to have a soft touch with that. Anyway, one of the things a
friend suggested when I was working on that was to get a winch from a
boat trailer or come-a-long, and then do the same pulley-cable thing I
did. From there it wouldn't be too hard to motorize the winch or buy a
motorized one, but even without a motor, a winch handle or come-a-long
should be easier to move than the little handle on your R&P.
Good luck,
Andy