20" Floor Drill Press - 1 HP

Very nice - with a few caveats

I bought this based on prior good experiences with this brand and the long quill travel. That long quill travel should allow me to drill current turning projects without having to adjust the material's height during drilling. Overall, this tool appears well made and will be a nice upgrade from my ~20 year old 13" Craftsman drill press (which has about half the quill travel). Assembly is a guessing game as the packaging includes no assembly information. Rikon's website has assembly instructions for this model, but they don't match the current design of this tool (and therefore are of little help). You can find their outdated version at: http://www.rikontools.com/manuals/30240.pdf The online assembly info shows the work table's support arm comes pre-mounted to the column. My brand new 30-240 had the work table attached to the arm but the arm/table assembly was NOT attached to the column. Attaching the arm requires removing the rack collar and rack, inserting the rack into the work table's center hole, and slipping that combined rack/table assembly back onto the column…then reinstalling the rack collar. Sounds easy, but if you don't discover this until after you've mounted the very heavy head, you won't be happy about the lack of basic assembly directions or the obvious design changes in what you received vs. what's shown in Rikon's online documentation. The drill press head includes a socket for a light bulb. The owner's manual, and the drill press itself, seem to completely lack all mention of what maximum wattage bulb can be used. Given that a standard incandescent bulb has less than a finger's width of clearance from the inside edges of the head, and those bulbs get pretty hot during use, it seems like too bright of a bulb could produce a burn risk upon touching the outside of the drill head near the bulb. Seems like max wattage ratings should be a standard requirement for UL compliance… Instead, I recommend a compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb. A 13W CFL produces the same lumens as a 60w incandescent with far less heat and should tolerate vibration better… The slotted table is nice and big…but I'm having trouble finding anything designed to attach to it. There's no documentation on what size connectors should fit into the large t-slots. Woodcraft lists zero recommended accessories (and certainly their normal offerings of t-slot items are far too small for this table). 5/8" carriage bolts have heads that are too wide (though the shafts are just right). 5/8" hex head bolts have heads that are too narrow (they'll spin freely in the t-slots). 1/2" carriage bolts are too small (the heads fit but the built-in nut spins freely in the 5/8" wide slot). There's no hole in the center of the table, despite one being shown in the assembly section of the user manual (see URL above). The picture at the top of the user manual that I linked to shows the current table (which has no center hole). Care should be taken in designing an auxiliary table and in determining table height to minimize bumping the cast iron table while drilling through workpieces. Woodcraft lists the shipping weight as 300 lbs. Rikon's website lists it as 318. The actual box was marked, "GW: 260lbs NW: 250lbs". Aside from those issues, the drill press was fairly easy to assemble. Be advised, the head is quite heavy and should be hoisted into place by at least two-people. Preferably, a third will be on hand to guide the head onto the shaft so neither person lifting the head will be distracted by that alignment. Correcting the problems described above would raise my rating.