Don D. wrote:

I am looking at 12" bench top drill presses and the three I see a
Craftsman, Rigid, and Ryobi.

If you can manage the space and the cash, go floor model if at all possible.
I got a benchtop, kept it for about a year or two, then traded for a floor
model. I wish I had skipped the intermediate step. I lost a lot of money
selling the original DP for a song, just to get it out of my shed.

My theory behind a benchtop was that I would never need the full travel of a
big press anyway, but I found that the little DP just didn't offer enough
travel to get the job done. The bottom 5" or so of the travel were useless
due to the table mechanism, and anything that needed to have the table
lower than that involved stacking a bunch of crap on the base and trying to
cobble together some hack solution to drill into a piece that required an
extra 3/4" beyond what the table could give me. I don't need this extra
travel very often, but when I need it, it sure is nice to have.

On floor models, I would probably not buy another Craftsman. I get along
with mine fine, but it's a question of living with some pretty serious
shortcomings that aren't quite serious enough to actually prevent me from
doing anything.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
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