Mikrabench Mini Drill Press — 0.3 to 4 mm

Description

A bench drill small enough for watch plates and steady enough to trust with the part you already spent an evening on. Aluminium body, belt drive, 12 V with a US adapter. The chuck takes bits from 0.3 mm to 4 mm and brings them down straight.

The numbers, before anything else

• 30 watts. 12 V, 5 A. That is the whole story of this machine and it is why the limits below are what they are. Most shops do not print this figure. We lead with it.
• 400 to 4500 rpm, continuously variable. The dial is on the power adapter, not on the machine.
• Maker's drilling capacity: 4 mm in wood, 3 mm in metal. Read the next section before you take the 3 mm at face value.
• Chuck 0.3-4 mm, JT0 taper.
• 100 x 80 x 180 mm. Column 13 mm, stroke 13 mm. About the desk footprint of a coffee maker.
• It is quiet. Owners of this machine mention working at night without annoying the house. That is not a spec, it is what people who own one say.
• Weight: we will publish ours from our own scale. The figures in circulation range from 800 g to 2.1 kg and they cannot all be right, so we are not repeating any of them.

What owners actually say, including the bad part

We read the reviews on this machine before we listed it. Two things come up again and again, and you should know both.

The torque is modest, so the honest working limit in metal is nearer 2 mm than 3. One owner drilling brass for model railway work put it plainly: good precision, quiet, but low torque, and in practice he would keep it to 2 mm. The 3 mm figure is the manufacturer's. The 2 mm is a man with brass in front of him. Believe the second one.

The speed regulator in the box is the cheapest part of the machine. Another owner said the drill itself was excellent and the regulator looked assembled in somebody's garage - and still worked. That matches what we expect at this price. It is also why we keep spare regulators on the shelf: if yours dies inside 12 months, you tell us and we post one, free.

About the photographs on this page

A third complaint comes up on machines like this one: photos that do not match what arrives. So here is where ours came from. The pictures above are the manufacturer's own. We are telling you that instead of implying we shot them. Our own sample is on its way, and when it lands we will replace every one of them with photographs of the actual machine on our actual bench - including whatever we do not like about it.

Either way the promise is the same: if what arrives does not look like what you saw here, that is a return and we pay for it.

What is in the box

The press, the speed-control power adapter with a US plug, and the chuck key. Same in all three kits.

Because the adapter is already in there with a dial on it, you do not need to buy a separate variable supply to run this machine. We sell one, and we say the same thing on its page.

What it is built like

• Aluminium body, CNC machined parts. The mass is the point: a base that sits still is what keeps a 0.5 mm bit from walking.
• Belt drive, two stepped pulleys. Move the belt to the other step and the whole speed band shifts. Five seconds, no tools.
• Head rotates 360 degrees on the column and slides up and down it.
• Nothing to buy to make it fit. Every vise and platform we sell bolts straight to this base - one centre hole and six M3 threads, the same pattern on all of them.

Which kit is yours

Bench Kit - $139. The machine, adapter and chuck key, plus 20 micro bits 0.1-1.2 mm. For anyone who already owns a vise.

Watchmaker Kit - $179. Everything above plus a 3.5 inch bench vise that clamps to the edge of the desk, and a dial indicator with a magnetic base so you can measure the runout on your own machine before you trust it with anything.

PCB Kit - $199. Everything above plus a 10-piece cobalt drill set, 0.5 to 3 mm, an automatic centre punch and a spare drive belt.

Two words on that drill set, because padding it would have been easy. Kits like this usually ship a 19-piece set running 1 to 10 mm. It reads generously until you notice that this chuck closes at 4 mm and the motor is 30 W, so most of those bits would never turn in this machine. Ours stops at 3 mm because that is where the machine stops. And the ten pieces are five sizes with a spare of each - 0.5, 1, 2, 2.5 and 3 mm - not ten different diameters. At this scale the spare is the part you want, because fine bits break.

Where it stops

It drills wood, plastic, resin, composite panel, PCB, brass, copper and aluminium.

Hardened steel, no. A 10 mm hole through a steel plate, no. That is a floor drill press job, and we would rather you bought one of those than returned one of these.

Stainless we are not claiming either way yet. You will see clips online of a machine like this going through a spoon handle - that footage is shot on the heavier 24 V version, not on this one. We have a sample coming and we will publish what ours actually managed, with the bit, the speed and the time it took.

Can it mill?

Not with the chuck it ships with. A drill chuck grips for downward force. An end mill cuts sideways, and side load pulls the bit out of a drill chuck - at best a ruined cut, at worst a broken bit thrown across the desk.

Milling on a machine this size needs a collet spindle, usually ER11, plus an XY cross-slide table underneath. Every clip you have seen of one of these cutting a slot in brass or a coin-style medallion was shot with that spindle fitted, even when the ad does not mention it.

We are sourcing the spindle now, and we will tell you where that stands: it is not a shelf item. It is made by the factory that makes the machine, and nobody resells it loose. We are going to the factory for it. When it is in stock this page will say so and will say what it costs. Until then this machine drills - it does not mill, and we are not going to imply that it does.

Shipping, returns and parts

Processing takes up to 2 business days. Delivery in the US takes 2 to 3 weeks, tracked, one parcel, free.

We could have printed 4 to 7 days. Most shops do. The truth is that there is no warehouse in the States holding these: it leaves the factory that builds it, flies, and then goes into the post. That is two to three weeks. When we are holding stock here the line will change, and you will be able to see that it changed.

30-day returns. If it arrives damaged or does not hold tolerance, we replace it or refund it and we pay the return label.

12-month warranty on the motor and spindle. And for those 12 months, if a part fails, tell us which one and we ship you a new one free - you do not pack the machine and you do not pay postage. Belts and regulators we keep on the shelf for exactly this reason.