what would happen if you replaced your standard bearings for side load bearings in the motor of your drill press? My brother works for SKF bearings and im sure could source me bearings that would be capable of side load... A 150$ drill press sure beats a 5k+ mill any day... my old high school used an old 1960s drill press with a movable table, and it seemed to work.

if your in the states and are looking for needles you might be able to get them for free, depending on location. At least where I used to be they did a needle exchange program whee they would give you clean needles for dirty ones. They would offer a free starter kit with like 2 needle, then you'd just have to get them to accept them back without the tips...

BTW, stainless steel isn't plated (that's galvansied steel which is usually zinc plated). Stainless is an alloy of chrome, nickel and iron in various proportions (usually around 15-20% chrome and 5-10% nickel).

Thanks for the correction: I thought it was still plated.

Putting bigger/better bearings in a drill to increase it's milling ability is really not a viable option in most cases. Especially if you don't have a mill handy to reshape the bearing pockets (and if you do, then what's the point???) The problem is only partly the bearings, which are usually the best available for that application already.

The key problem is that the column on a drill press is to skinny to support the side loads imposed by trying to do milling with it. If you compare the column diameters of a normal drill press and even a cheap mill you will note that the mill column is probably at least 2 X the size of the drill press. This means the column flexes less, and puts less load on the bearings because of their bigger sizes. Also while both machines use bearings that must allow axial movement while resisting radial movment (up/down is OK, but not sideways) the mill bearings are chosen with more attention to handling side loads.

Gooserider

i would imagine a mill probably uses roller bearings or tapered rollers, whereas drill presses would use ball bearings.

That's likely, Ozzy, but probably not the entire story. Bearings tend to be such that they aid movement in one plane, and resist it in others. Thus I would expect a mill to have dual bearing sets with one that allows easy up/down motion, and the other that allows easy rotation, but both resistant to side loads. A drill press is more likely to have a single set of bearings that would try to handle both jobs.

Gooserider