I think since the day I got it several years ago, my drill press has squeaked. It happened – every time – when I turned the chuck by hand a little to orient the hole for the chuck key to a convenient place. It’s fine when it’s running.
I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but have tried a couple of times to make it stop – to no avail. When it annoyed me today, I finally caught it.
I pulled the belt off the speed change pulleys, and (like always) turned the quill pulley by hand. No noise. But this time I turned the motor – and it squeaked! Wow – it’s narrowed down!
But what’s squeaking? I dribbled a little oil into the top bearing – no change. Looking through the cooling slots near the bottom of the motor, I could see a mechanism – which turned out to be the centrifugal switch on this single phase motor – and that seemed the likely culprit. I was temped to just spray some oil all over it, but I didn’t understand how it worked, and didn’t want oil on the actual contacts.
Google images provided lots of pictures, but none looked quite like mine. Then I looked through the slots on the other side of the motor – and there were electrical contacts! Now if I could see what was rubbing, I could lube it without getting oil on the contacts.
I finally divined that a disc was rubbing against a protrusion on the contact mechanism. This was by design – it’s how the contact is operated. I put a drop of oil on the end of a long scribe, carefully inserted it through a cooling slot and deposited the payload pretty accurately right where the disc and protrusion met. I spun the motor back and forth a few times – and the squeak was gone! The arrow points to a bit of shininess that’s probably oil at the critical spot.
That’s been bugging me for years. Now the fix will come back and give me a little pleasure every time I use the drill press. Excellent.
Thanks, your suggestion took care of the squeak in my Craftsman drill press.
Congrats on quieting your drill press down!
Jim