Customer Reviews

Delta DP400 Shopmaster 16-1/2-Inch Drill Press

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I've had this drill press for about a week now, so this is a fairly brief review. I bought this particular version from a local large home supply establishment. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it.

I carried it home in a VW New Beetle, so it's a manageable package. It came well packed in a sturdy cardboard box lined with foam. I and took it downstairs in pieces, since the whole box is near 180 pounds. It assembled quickly. There are really only 4 parts; the base, the support post, the table, and the motor and belt head. The hardest part was cleaning off the packing grease -- I used kerosene -- and then waxing all the bare metal parts with paste wax.

I measured the runout with my admittedly less than high quality dial indicator and a spare mill bit in the chuck and came out with around .0018" I haven't done any real heavy cleaning of the chuck assembly so there could be some grit or packing gunk inside.

Speed changes are easy by moving a small lever and loosening a thumbscrew. The only thing I'm less than completely happy with is the table assembly. It uses a rack and pinion to raise and lower the table. The rack is held against the post by just a ring up top and it fits into the base at the bottom. There is no support along the length of the rack so there ends up being quite a bit of play in the middle of rack where it sags out away from the post. As a warning to overly harsh treatment, the rack on the display model at the store was severly bent. Also to angle the table, you have to get under it and pull a pin. I haven't tried that yet, but it could have been made easier.

I did try angling the table last night. To me it's a pain, but I don't know how common this method is. You have to remove the pin, which comes out with the use of a wrench, and then loosen a big bolt that holds the table. The bolt is hard to get to being between a couple of reinforcement webs and is large. I think it's a metric just smaller than 15/16". I used a 15/16" socket and it was a little loose, while 7/8" was too small and I don't have a 31/32" wrench to try and my metrics only go up to 17mm. I did see a quick release bolt in another catalog for drill presses that might work.

Overall I'm impressed with the performance of this drill.

However the belts on the top seem to vibrate a lot, I guess its because they used cast pulleys instead of machined. This is running at the max RPM which I typically do for my type of drilling.

I was hoping this would go away after the break in period but I have used the drill for about 10 months now and still it vibrates a lot. Finally I purchased a powertwist belt which makes this bearable but still not as well as I would expect.

I just recently purchased a DP400 at a local woodworking supply shop and I think it was the best model for the money. The square, "dry" table with the flat edges makes a good clamping surface. The 3/4 hp motor is a big plus for the money, and the speed range is good, although, as the previous poster noted, it does have more vibration that I would like at higher speeds (2000+ rpm). I'm hoping that a better belt will improve this somewhat. The only major drawback I see is the stop. I would have preferred a good positive locking-screw stop. However, such a stop on most of the other machines I was looking at in this price range were not worth having.

All in all, I would recommend this tool.