Customer Reviews

Jet JDP-12 12-Inch Drill Press with Digital Readout

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Given the number of bearings used in this drill press It is a very well engineered, solid and stable machine with almost zero runout. Comparing this Jet bench top drill press to that rattling POS 12" Ryobi, which I bought initially and returned right away, is like comparing a Rolls-Royce and Ugo. However, given that sad fact that this Jet drill press was assembled in China, and in my professional experience Chinese generally don't give a damn about quality, my new drill press came with the following flaws:

1. Depth gauge lock collar (part JDP12-35) was broken and its pan head screw and hex nut were missing.
2. Tilt scale indicator (part JDP12-135) was cracked.
3. Left laser (part JDP12-47) has a beam three times wider than the right one.
4. Support roller (part JDP12-25) is deformed and out of cylindrical shape on one end.

When I pay a good money for something, I demand quality and nothing but the quality!!!

I'm going to order replacement for these defective parts from WMH Tool Group, Inc which manufactures these drill presses.

I used this Jet drill press continuously for two days and it has been proven to be a very solid performer, besides these QC flaws listed above. The variety of tasks I have accomplished without a hitch speaks for itself. Drilling precisely positioned holes to install threaded inserts in network conduit pull boxes. Drilling 0.5mm component mounting holes on circuit boards. Drilling precisely spaced and positioned holes on the rifle receiver to install a new rear sight. I could not have accomplished these tasks with any drill presses sold in big box stores locally, especially with that POS Ryobi for which I developed a strong disgust for the rest of my life. Needless to say it was assembled in China as well.

The chuck which came with this Jet drill press is a very high quality, tight and precise piece, which I never seen on any comparable bench top drill presses before. It doesn't wobble or rattles loosely even when it's spinning in open position. The machined surfaces of the base and support table are much smoother and better quality than those I saw on other bench top drill presses namely POS Ryobi, Central Machinery, Rigid and Delta. Quality of the metal cast parts is not perfect but does not have any visible voids, under and over casts that I saw on drill presses named above.
I wish I had an option to buy un-assembled Jet drill press kit to put it properly together by myself without reliance on foreign sweat shop assembly slaves.
The bottom line. If you need a heavy duty reliable, stable and relatively inexpensive bench top drill press the Jet is the way to go. I wish that some day such machinery will be again manufactured in USA to the highest quality standards we used to be known for. But it's up to us to make it a reality. Screw Chinese buy American products is the best recipe for it. For now I'm giving this Jet four stars, but I may review it later again with the lower scoring if it falls apart or does not perform as good as it is now.

Update 19-Oct-2009
I received and installed all the replacement parts sent me by Jet Customer service. The drill press still functioning admirably. However, due to the "corner cutting" in its manufacturing process and Chinese "quality" of its original assembly, I had to make the following improvements:

1. Completely disassembled all mechanical parts and washed out all original crappy cosmoline grease. Re-assembled and lubricated everything with Super Lube Synthetic grease. [...]

2. Installed flat 1.5mm thick copper washer between Pinion Shaft (part JDP12-56) and Coil Spring (part JDP12-81). The washer is roughly equal in its outer diameter to the inner diameter of plastic Spring Retainer (part JDP12-83). This improvement prevents coil spring from rubbing and scorching the side of the head base, thus reduces noise and friction dramatically.

3. Installed flat 0.5mm bronze-oil bushing between Hex Jam Nut (part JDP12-79) and Spring Cap (part JDP12-81). This improvement completely eliminates Pinion Shaft side play, and also eliminates coil spring vibration and noise as well.

4. Installed flat 1.5mm thick copper washer between speed adjustment Hub (part JDP12-95) and Shaft Plate (part JDP12-70). The washer has the same outer diameter as in case 2, and it is a little bit beveled with the file to fit into the hub's beveled inner round cavity. Installed flat 0.3mm copper washer between elevation Shaft (part JDP12-69) and Shaft Plate (part JDP12-70). The washer's outer diameter matches to the outer diameter of the elevation shaft. This eliminates an excessive friction and grinding in speed changing hub assembly. Due to this improvement speed changing now is much more easier and smoother.

5. Reshaped Set Screw (part JDP12-84) quill groove mating surfaces to the true rectangular shape and polished them. This improvement ensures very smooth vertical quill movement without any side play and runout.

Now my inexpensive drill press runs like a $1,000 piece of truly professional machinery. The total cost of improvement was no more than $15.00 for parts and grease, plus four hours of my non-sweat shop manual labor.

Hope you can do the same to improve your JET drill press quality and precision as well.

For the price, this is a very high quality drill press. For my use it is perfect. I really like the safety feature of the chuck key which prevents one from accidentally leaving the chuck key in the chuck. It has a spring loaded tip that requires you to keep an inward pressure on the key while tightening or loosening the chuck. As soon as you no longer apply inward pressure on the key, it pushes it self out of the chuck keeping it in your hand. Very nice safety feature.

Another nice feature is the 'on/off" switch is located on the front of the drill press and to turn it on, you pull it towards you, thus if something should go haywire (like not securing the drilled object down and it gets away from you), you can shut the drill press down with your forehead. Hopefully one would not get themselves in this type of situation, but sometimes even the best of us makes an error, and your head is the closes thing to the switch. The laser light is nice as is the work light. A nice feature of the laser light is that it is powered by internal circuitry (not battery powered), so if you forget and leave the laser light on, you don,t have a battery to replace.

Another nice feature is being able to change drilling speeds with out having to change the belt location on the pulley. There is a handle on the left side that you push or pull to change the speed while the drill press is running and a digital display above the "on/off" switch that shows the RPM. Like I said in the beginning that for the price, this is an outstanding quality product.

Supposedly this item was shipped factory direct. The box it arrived in looked like it had been in WW2 - I almost told the UPS guy that I didn't want to accept delivery. Then I figured, what can possibly be wrong?

Unpacking was easy as the box was falling apart. All the parts were there, but it looked like some items had been pre-assembled - I was thinking maybe they shipped me a "return". Got the whole thing put together though fairly easily.

Problems: 1) The LED light fell out from the socket (it was pre-inserted). Luckily it fell on a rubber mat. 2) the Laser crosshair lights don't work at all. 3) No warranty/registration card.

Jet customer service is non-existent after 5 Mountain. There is no way to leave a message (voice or email). Forget about trying to register your product online.

It seems the only recourse to getting the lasers fixed is to schlep the thing to a service center 20-some miles away.

First and last time I buy a Jet product online. For the price, I think a Craftsman would have been a better deal.

Drill press arrived. Has low speed runout. Called the company and now they tell me I have to haul the thing 30 miles to the nearest aurthorized Jet repair, to have them look at it.
UPDATE: IT'S NOW JULY, AND THE DIGITAL READOUT NO LONGER WORKS. I NOW HAVE TO RETURN THE PRESS AND GET ANOTHER ONE. FORTUNATELY AMAZON AND RUSSELL AT JET IS COOPERATING AND ARRANGING FOR THE SPECIAL HANDLING DUE TO IT'S WEIGHT. IT IS A HASSEL TO ARRANGE TO BE HOME SO THEY CAN PICK IT UP, AND THEN WAIT FOR THE NEW ON TO BE SHIPPED. I OWN OTHER JET TOOLS AND NEVER HAD THIS PROBLEM. HOPE THE NEW ONE IS BETTER

UPDATE AGAIN: 2nd one was not much better. I expressed my displeasure to the wmh tool group. Customer service was fantastic. They not only apologized profusely, they are sending me a new press with special attention paid to it and,... get this, they're letting me keep the other one for free. They do need to improve their qc. 5 star customer service, 1 star qc.

I would agree with most of the positive comments about this tool and operating it. This tool seems to be a good solution for a robust and reliable drill press.

As others have also alluded,however, a combination of UPS shipping and some shoddy wiring can cause a small annoyance or two... As you know, this is a heavy tool and the delivery folks test the capabilities of the box and the packing material. In my situation, the LED speed indicator didn't work. I took off the three face screws holding the LED board and noticed one of the wires was ajar from the plug that pins into the circuit board. I reconnected and I was back in business.

I purchased this drill press because I like Jet tools and don't have the room for a stand alone press. I purchased from Amazon because of the price and free shipping. My drill press arrived via a freight company not UPS in good shape. Assemble was easy although it is a heavy press. You really need two people to put it on a workbench. During checkout everything worked great. The next day I went to drill some pen blanks and the speed indicator and laser pointer didn't work. I call Jet and in order for them to fix it, I would have to take the press 90 miles to their repair shop. They offered to ship the defective part, but they were out of stock. Two weeks minimum to get them in. So I called Amazon and they shipped me a new one right out. I received it a few days later, but the shipper did not have a Bill of Lading for the defective one. Here is where it gets fun. Three calls to Amazon and a month later the trucking company finally picks up the defective press. End of story, "Oh No". I received a $300 charge on my credit card from Amazon because I had failed to return the original press. Another call to Amazon and everything was finally resolved. I read the reviews and looked a other site reviews, and the laser points and speed readout appears to be a common problem. While it took several calls to get issues resolved, the Amazon Customer Service Call Center is the best one I have ever used. The people are very nice and try to resolve your problems. GREAT JOB AMAZON.

I hate to write a bad review about a product but in this case i feel i have no choice.As you know when buying a product there is always one lemon,well in this case there are two lemons and i bought both of them,this Jet Jdp12-12 inch drill press is by far the worst thing i have ever purchased,too begin with the first one i bought when putting it together i found that the table support housing was cracked so i called Jet thy sent me a new housing but with out the gears in it they said i had to bang the other ones out with a punch and a hammer,now keep in mind this is all cast iron,well needless to say it would not come out so i called Amazon.com and they sent out a replacement and that i had for all of a month maybe used it a dozen times and i believe the gear box broke or there is a problem with the motor,another thing bad about this drill press is the L.E.D work light and the laser system are not even worth the energy it would take to brake them,All in all i would not recommend anyone buy this drill press unless you are prepared for a lot of frustrating time.Thank you,Don

I received my drill press via UPS but the box was badly beaten and looked like it had been opened and re-opened several times. After re-opening the box it appeared that this drill was partially assembled at one time so that saved a few minutes. The digital readout and laser work fine and I do like the work light. I never realized how dark it is at the table. The depth stop is a joke. I removed it and fabricated my own. Changing speeds is easy because you don't have to remove the belt but while moving the lever it feels like double clutching a 48 packard. Not the smoothest. It's a pain to get the chuck seated. The safety feature is a great thing since I have left the key in the chuck before and ventilated a cabinet door of a cabinet that was housing a gallon of laquer thinner which quickly became a few ounces so I can really appreciate that safety feature. I built a nice table and fence for it and really only use 2 speeds and it has worked great. I don't notice any runout to speak of and the power is plenty for all I do. When I saw the price of $249.00 I had to take the risk even after reading many negative reviews because Jet is quality stuff. But the quality control is horrible where ever this was built (China I believe) but with some tweaking, it's still a pretty good bargain if you're willing to put a few hours into it. 3 Starz mostly for price and the Jet name which makes me comfortable that this will last me a while.

I bought this drill to use while knife making. Very good drill very little run out. Everything I expected, but I had no chuck key when I put it together. Called Jet they instructed me to call the place I bought it from. I called Amazon and they were very nice and told me the would send me another drill press and I could open it and get the chuck key. Box it up and return the drill back to Amazon. All this trouble for a $5.00 chuck key. I went to local hardware store and bought myself one.
Very good drill for what I need.

When my drill press arrived, the box looked like it was dropped off a truck and dragged the last 100 miles...Nothing inside showed any visible damage, though. Assembling the parts, it was clear QC either took the day off or the company hired a dufus to man the assembly line...The column lock handle threads were completely stripped and the depth stop was rubbing hard against a hole in the cast housing...This is not something you miss...it is something that is either completely intentional or totally incompetent. You cannot count on Jet quality any more...it is going down the tubes, fast!!!