How Good is the PowerMatic® 2800 Drill Press?

Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. We really enjoy our Powermatic 2800 18-inch variable speed drill press. Stick with me and I'll walk you through some of my favorite features about this and why you might want to consider getting one of these beauties. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. We really enjoy this drill press, but there's reasons for it. Sure, Powermatic is one of the best brand names out there, but did they live up to their promise and to their press in designing and implementing all the different features in this drill press? Well, this drill press is about 10 years old. There's actually another drill press that they have now out there, the PM2800B, that is very similar to this and uses a lot of the same features. We bought this used about 10 years ago, and the person who had it took excellent care of it, so everything was intact. But I want to walk you through a couple, or many, they've done some great features in this that really make this more a woodworker's or maker's press. Sure, it can be used for metal, but it works really well in a shop like mine where the main emphasis is woodworking. So let's get started. I'm going to hit a couple things for you. First of all, let's look at the handle. This is the typical, you know, three-axis handle that you can actually overreach back here and then pull through if you need a good range of travel. And those three are set up. There's also, if you don't like using on the right hand, you're left-handed, look at the same hubs on this side right here. You can put the handles on that side and set it up right there. While we're over here, let's stick over here, we're going to show you right here is the depth stops. And these are the standard screw-on type. They work pretty well. You can adjust those up and down, opposing lock, and now that's going to set the depth here of how far the drill bit drops. When you go ahead and bring this down, it's going to hit the stop. You're going to hit the same place over and over again. That's why it's called the stop. So it works really well. This has, without any stop setting, if you left everything wide open, there's about six inches of travel here on this quill. So it works really well. There's a couple other features I really like about this. It has a crosshairs laser. So if I take something and put it on the table there, you can see exactly where the bit is going to encounter the work. So that does a great job, and those are easily adjustable. It also has a couple of LED lamps, although I would say those are okay. They're just not really that great. They're very small, and they work well if it's dim, but I tend to use another larger lamp, a clamp-on lamp, or just make sure that I'm working in conditions where I can actually see things. But the lamps are there and it works really well. Now in the newer drill press, they have changed from this keyless model. Right now, I can go ahead and open and close everything using just hand pressure right here. So you can see the chuck jaws came down and closed. I can also back up and forward like this and open and close them very easily. And actually, that is very, very convenient. The later models now have gone to having a key chuck back in there. I like it this way, but if I was going to buy a new one, I certainly wouldn't object to having the keyed version either because you can really clamp down on something when you need to to secure it. Here is an important safety feature that I think they did a great job on, and that is making sure that the power control is right up front here. So when you have this running like this, let's suppose that I'm working in here and somehow I end up with a problem. Well, I don't have to fumble the switch. I can shoulder it and it's off. Or if I wanted to, I could head bump it and shut it off, right? So it's very intuitive. I like that it's right up front. Another great feature they've come up with. One of the best features on this press is the way they have designed the table. It's an oversized table to begin with. It has twin miter slots that are T undercut in here that allow you to clamp accessories in them. Or if you've got some kind of sliding fixture that you don't want to lift out of the keys, that's already milled in. Replaceable inserts here where you can put different inserts. I tend to build a bigger insert and put it off center so you can rotate it around. So as you use it up, it isn't a one use. You can go ahead and rotate it around. But this fence comes with it already done like this. And this fence has an integrated dust collection port where you can put on your shop vac on the back. This can open and close on the back. And I'll go ahead and show you that very quickly by untightening these. I can bring this in and open it wider and adjust where I want that gap if I need one at all. But when I'm using vacuum then I can set that and re-put that in there. It also comes with these handles. Now you need to check out one of our other videos and it's in the description below. These handles used to be all the way down here and they were a little bit hard to get to. We put these extenders on here allowing you to get these right up on the top here. And now you can see I can adjust this fence wherever I need to be in relation to the bit. And then it's very easy to tighten it back down and secure it. The fence also has these T slots in it. And those T slots allow you to put accessories on it such as this Craig stop that you could slide up and down to register work against and to consistently drill in the same position over and over again in different pieces of wood. So it's really nice. And that particular stop can be flipped back out of the way so it's clear through. No problems. Now here is a great feature that's on this. This table, as large as it is compared to what you usually see in a metal working drill press, even gets larger. And that's done by reaching under the table, undoing the two clasps that are under the bottom, sliding the table open, re-tightening the clasp, and you do that on both sides. And as you can see, you've now extended the table size and it is much more stable for longer work that you're working with and kind of puts off the need a little bit longer for outrigger tables or outrigger lifts. When it gets a lot longer, you need to do that. But for moderate size, this works just fine of opening these here. And then to return it back, it's very easy. You simply open the clasp again, shove the piece back, and re-tighten it. And now you're back to the initial configuration. Okay, as far as raising and lowering the table, you have a standard, somewhat standard, column lift on this. And if you see back here, this is the tighten device right here for around this column. So the first thing you need to do to adjust the column or adjust the height of the table is unloosen that. And then let's go to the other side here. And then here's your crank in which you can raise the table or lower the table, obviously because weight is against you when you're raising it and working for you when you're going down here. It comes down easier than it goes up, but you can see this works very well. And it can be rotated like most standard drill presses, but you're going to probably just line it back up in line with the hole here. And once it's at the height you want, then you're simply going to tighten this back up. Pretty straightforward stuff. One other thing that this drill press does, although I personally don't use this feature very much, is that you can rotate the table. It does have a scale here that allows you to tilt the table. Let's suppose that you're trying to have a Forstner bit enter into a piece of wood at 15 degrees. You can certainly do that on the drill press right here without building a ramp or that sort of thing. Works very well. And what I would do in that case is use one of the Wixie digital gauges that you just simply put on the table, zero it out, rotate it until it's right. That verifies the reading on the scale. And now you're at the right angle of the hole going into the piece of work that you're working with. I think I've saved the best for last. My very favorite feature of this drill press is its variable speed on the fly. Meaning you don't have to start and stop whenever you're going to change speeds depending on the diameter of the bit you're using, the hardness of the wood, the type of the cutter that you're using, whatever device you're putting into this chuck. As you can see as you come around to the side here, there is a little bit of a scale on the side here that this will adjust from 3,000 rpm down to 400 and these are changing spindle speeds. Notice that it has to be running when you do this. I can't stress that enough. People have really messed up their drill press and I've actually seen people on forums like in shop settings for high school or industrial arts where somebody changes this at the beginning. It's not meant to do that. It has to be running to allow everything to adjust where it needs to be. So while this is running, you're going to simply unscrew this, lighten it up, and then pull it forward or backwards to the desired speed. And right at the front here, the LED readout will tell you what the speed is. It's a beautiful thing. So let's go ahead and fire this up and I'm going to show you the change. Then we're going to pull the top and I'm going to show you those mechanisms working. All right, let's go ahead and demonstrate how this works. So when we turn on the drill press, it's going to indicate the rpms it's running at right now. So we're just below 1,700 rpm and it bounces a little bit but it's in that area. So it's all within range. Now to change the speed, you're going to untighten this and let's slow it down. So what I'm going to do is pull it forward and retighten back up and now we've brought it down to about 760. There it's running. You can see the speed of the spindle down here is very okay. You can actually almost see the, you can see the rotation. Let's go ahead and take it up to its maximum. You can hear the pitch change. Look at right here, 3,000 rpm. Now look at the spindle. Really blurred, right? The thing is really moving along. So what's going on behind the scenes here? Well, let's take the cover off. To do that, you're going to undo two screws right here and there's one in the back and when you remove them, this is what you're going to get out of there. So let's go ahead and take a look. We'll shut her down. We'll take off the handle over here. You got to have that off. So we'll go ahead and rotate that out and the reason I'm showing this to you also is so you can see the serviceable area in the machine. So we're going to go ahead and leave that here. I've already removed the screws here. Let's go ahead and lift this up. Tilt it out. Okay. All right. So we've gone ahead and moved, removed the cover here and what you're looking at is these pulleys are variable pitch, meaning they're under pressure but depending on how much pull is exerted on them by changing this center, these will change size and therefore diameter of where the belt is encountering the shaft, therefore speeding up or slowing down. The motor is at a fixed rate running. So let's go ahead and turn it on. We're going to go ahead and see what it looks. There you go. It's running at the highest speed right now. As you can see, it's really moving. Let's go ahead. We're going to be very careful here. I'm going to rotate this down into lower speed. Watch what happens. You can see in the back, see the belt getting closer to the motor shaft and in the front, look what's happening there. The pulley is changing diameter. So now the the belt is running further away from the shaft. So I'm going to go and tighten that off. Leave it right there and we're showing an indicated speed of 532 rpm. You can see it right here. Let's go ahead and speed it up again and just watch it in reverse. This area right here, as that fulcrum changes, it's changing the pressure on the two different belts and therefore how wide open the pulleys are. So let's do that. Here we go. We're going to go ahead and change. I think you'd have to agree this is pretty ingenious stuff that they came up with. Again, you can see the change happen. You can also see why it's necessary for it to be running when this is done. Otherwise, the pressure is not distributed correctly. It doesn't allow the pulleys to move apart correctly and you can really damage the machine. Let's go ahead and shut that off. Well, I'm not going to take time to put the cover on right now. Again, let's go ahead and wind this up. This is a great machine. They are not cheap. These machines cost between $1,600 and $1,800 new. You might consider doing exactly what we did and that is find someone that has one of these that's taken good care of it. We like some of the features on the older model versus the new model, but that doesn't mean the new model wouldn't be attractive if I was in the market for it. If you have experience with this machine or another similar one that you'd like to share with your fellow viewers, feel free to do so in the comments below and we'll make sure to help get the word out that way. If you found this video to be helpful to you, won't you like it? And better yet, won't you please subscribe to our channel? And when you do subscribe, make sure to ring the bell and that way you'll be notified immediately every time a new video comes out about the home, the shop, the garden, or the kitchen. Until the next time, this is Pure Farmer Jay from purefarmerjay.com.