On Saturday, February 4, 2017 at 2:45:05 PM UTC-5, wrote:

Greetings Bob,
I have thought about having a reversing motor for tapping on a drill
press many times. I was thinking that I would have a motor that turns
CCW by default and turns CW with a foot switch. Then all that needs to
be done to back off the tap is to step off of the switch. Now I may
really do it.
Eric

You might need to think about this a bit more. Assuming you have a single phase motor, it will not reverse instantly. But if it is three phase , you just need the foot switch to swap two leads.

Dan