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Scheppach DP55 Bench Drill Press

So I have the obligatory Proxxon mini drill with all possible accessories, including drill stand and compound table, but I found myself wanting a slightly bigger bench drill now and then. I do also have a hand-held cordless drill, which I've sometimes used to enlarge holes initially made with the Proxxon, but how accurate they turned out to be, varied wildly—just eyeballing the drill for vertical orientation isn't all too accurate. (Heck, why aren't they built with bubble levels as standard?) So I began looking for a cheap bench-top drill press, and soon found the Scheppach DP55. Cheap and nasty, but light weight and very compact! The latter two were, unfortunately, necessary prerequisites for me, as I don't actually have a dedicated place for the thing. I need to be able to move it off my desk when I'm not using it. (And did I mention it was cheap as well?)

Now, in these kind of machines, bigger and heavier is invariably better. The DP55 weighs less than 10 kg (as the base/table is aluminum instead of steel) and overall the unit's footprint measures some 30 cm square. But since I do not have a dedicated workshop with space for Real Machines, small size and light weight are something of an advantage. More than that, actually—a requirement, as I said above. This drill will fit on my desk, and I can easily move it onto the floor under the desk when it's not in use. (Yes, it's not bolted down, despite what the instructions mandate.)

The box proudly proclaims "Scheppach Germany" everywhere you care to look, but on the underside of the box, in tiny print, the truth is admitted: "Made in China". What did you expect?

And listen up! The Scheppach DP55 does not have a keyless chuck!!! The first thing I did was swap its original chuck for a keyless one. The photo on the right has the new keyless chuck fitted! And a few other customizations. Read below for details, e.g. what happens to the laser alignment guide if you do swap the chuck like I did.

The motor unit: The motor is specified at 700 W, and is a Class-II (double insulated) device, so it doesn't need even a safety grounded outlet. Its speed is adjustable between 500 and 2600 RPM, and it provides ample torque even at low speed, even when using bigger hole saws, for example. Its speed does oscillate a bit with the biggest ones, though. But no real complaints here, other than the noise. The gearbox between the motor and the drill spindle (I guess) is rather loud. If you think you've encountered a loud motor or loud bearings in a belt driven drill press, you ain't heard nothing yet! It's ok at 500 RPM, just bearable at 1000 RPM, but crazy at 2600. I'll have to take a look at that gearbox some time, just to see if it's lubed sufficiently. But even if I do goop it up with grease, there's no way it will ever be as quiet as any high quality belt driven drill press. But it's certainly way more compact than any I've seen, which I do appreciate a lot—otherwise I simply wouldn't have room for the thing! And I rarely find myself using the higher speeds anyway. This video, among repair tips, gives a pretty realistic idea of how loud the drill is (at around 4:30 in the video), if you compare it to the guy's voice.
One nice thing I noticed is that the drill remembers the last speed it was used on, even if unplugged in between. You can just plug it in, hit the green "ON" (or "I") button, and the speed will be where you left it! You can even adjust the speed up and down with the "+" and "−" buttons without having to turn on the display. The laser, however, will not turn on unless you turn on the display first.
There's just a bit of lateral wobble between the motor unit and the column. It's a fraction of a millimeter at the distance of the drill bit. The toothed rack on the column must be preventing the motor unit from rotating around the column, and I guess there's just a bit of extra slop in the guide rails against that toothed rack. I'll have to check if there's anything to tighten up in there to reduce the slop. If I get around to it, that is, as it doesn't seem all that critical in my use, really.

The laser: Pew! Pew! Wooooosh, Vroooommm, Pew-Pew-Pew-Pew-KABOOOMM!!! With a hand wheel that looks like a spaceship, lasers are a must! :) And they're reasonably well aligned, too. They can be fine-adjusted as shown in this video at around 7 minutes.
This is actually the first drill press I've ever used that has laser sights—err, alignment guides. (I didn't even realize line lasers were used for the purpose—I assumed a laser dot would be projected from off-axis, and that it would have to be calibrated according to work piece height. But now it all makes sense!) Until now, I had always used the old-school way: touch the work piece with the drill bit, adjust, repeat, lather, rinse, dry and then drill in anger. Just getting used to the idea of having laser sights on a drill press is the bigger hurdle for me, being the dinosaur that I am. Which is just as well, because the keyless chuck I swapped for the original keyed one just slightly gets in the way of one of the lasers, effectively rendering them useless. So I'll just keep with the old-school method, which is hardly much slower or more tedious, and is more accurate anyway. The convenience of the keyless chuck is far greater than the convenience of the lasers, I feel. But maybe some day I'll look into moving the lasers to better locations, who knows.

The stand: With a footprint of about 30 cm square, the base is not terribly big, but it's stable enough. The combined base/table is aluminum, which makes it light weight, but of course not nearly as strong or rigid as a steel base. Its machined top surface is almost planar, though not quite. The column attaches to the base with just two screws, but it's stable enough for light duty use. The entire motor unit, chuck and all, moves up and down the column smoothly enough by means of the hand wheel, which looks like a snazzy toy spaceship. It can move way high enough for my purposes, but the jaw is only some 12 cm deep, so be aware that it cannot drill holes further than that from the edge of any board. Look up the specs on the Internet, I won't repeat them here.
The column doesn't wobble (at least more than what might be expected from the flexing of a light weight aluminum base) unless you're drilling with a cheap, large-diameter hole saw. (Show me a drill press that doesn't wobble with one of those...!)
The clamp: There's a clamp fitted onto the column, which will hold the workpiece down against the table. The videos I saw on the Internet show it in use, but it just looked very... plasticky. Well, color me surprised, the tip of the clamp (the black part) is frigging plastic!!! (The rest of it is quite nice aluminum, though.) I removed the whole thing from the column, as it got in the way of the dust collection system described below.
In addition to the plastic clamp, a piece of aluminum L-profile is provided, with thumb screw attachment to the table. Extremely rudimentary, but maybe actually useable for some purpose. (And not fscking plastic!)

Of course, I bought a small machine vise and haven't touched the included clamping accessories since. One thing is annoying, however: the T-grooves in the table are spaced some 105 mm apart, whereas many vises seem to have a spacing of 133 mm! (Huh, that's 5 1/4 inches—does the standard come from floppy disks?) Also, the slots on various vises seem to be for M12 hardware, whereas the grooves in the table are only 10 mm wide. Is this a diminutive version of some common standard hardware used on Big Machines? Oh well, I've rarely needed to attach a vise anyway while drilling, even with the bigger drill presses I once had at my disposal. I can make do.
I also ordered these hold-down clamps (the blue ghings) in various sizes from AliExpress. They will secure a work piece directly to the base very well, although in most cases the vise is more convenient.

The chuck: This is *not* a keyless chuck!!! Several online retailers advertize the drill as having a keyless chuck, but that is a blatant lie (if perhaps an untentional one perpetuated by copypasting the same description again and again, through AI translation where necessary). However, the truth is out there (on the Net)—and I was aware of the fact when making the purchase, and was already preparing to replace the chuck with a keyless one.
But let me just re-iterate here: The Scheppach DP55 does not have a keyless chuck!
If you want a keyless chuck for the DP55, you'll need one with a B16 taper bore (i.e. hole). That will fit directly onto the B16 spindle taper of the drill press ("B16" was imprinted on the side of the original chuck), so don't worry if the arbor (or "adapter", as it were) it's provided with is MT2 or MT3 or whatever on the other side, or if there's no arbor included. Just make sure the chuck itself has a B16 taper bore. I ordered one from AliExpress. It's "Yunrux" branded, very cheap, but actually pretty decent quality. But as you know with AliExpress, Temu, eBay and such... Caveat emptor.
Replacing the chuck is described in the drill's manual. Essentially, it says to grab the chuck with one hand, and with the other, use a 27 mm spanner to tighten the nut above it (on the spindle, probably loose, looks like it has no purpose whatsoever) against the chuck to force it off the tapered spindle. In practice, I needed to hold the chuck with a pair of big adjustable pliers, as I tightened the nut against it. Using not an insignificant amount of force, the chuck began to slide out and finally came loose.

Here's the two chucks side by side, the Scheppach original ("San Ou" branded) on the left, the new keyless one ("Yunrux" branded) on the right. The arbor, which came with the new chuck, will go unused. To install the new keyless chuck, just move the nut back up to where it's not in the way, and slam the replacement chuck in. (Yes, that is the standard installation procedure for tapered chucks. Followed by a light hammer tap or two, if necessary.)
This is what the DP55 looks like with the replacement chuck fitted. The new chuck also does wobble a slight bit, just like the original. Hard to say whether both are cheaply made (as they probably are), or if the drill press itself is cheaply made (which it probably is). But the keyless chuck is infinitely more convenient to use.
There is one disadvantage, though, to using this keyless chuck. Being quite a bit taller, it gets in the way of one of the line lasers that make up the alignment guides, rendering them useless. I guess I could move that laser to a better location, but that'll be another project unto itself. For now, I'll just make do without. I've been happily drilling with machines without laser sights so far, I think I can survive without them in my home workshop as well. I'm definitely not going back to the keyed chuck, that's for sure!

Dust collection: I had already made a dust collection system for my Proxxon mini drill setup, so I already had the vacuum cleaner and hoses. I simply took a small plastic bottle of flattish boxy shape, cut out its larger sides, and added a 32 mm sewer pipe fitting to its mouth (I use those to connect to the vacuum system) to make this localized vacuum attachment. I then attached it to the column of the drill press with two hose clamps. It's a bit rough to adjust, but it stays in position, can be moved up and down as needed (though it cannot move further up than the bottom end of the toothed rack—I may have to hack up a better design some day, maybe re-purposing the original clamp the drill press came with), and swings out of the way when not in use. Easy peasy, very effective, and works with all but the tallest work pieces and all but the biggest hole saws. (And it does not even obstruct the laser sights either, unlike my new keyless chuck...)
When I do need the biggest hole saws, or have a crazy workpiece, the entire drill press will fit into this box which was the first design I built for my dust collection system.
All of this would actually be overkill, if only I had an actual workshop to make a mess in. But since my workshop / lab / nerd cave / room is crammed full of stuff—computers, oscilloscopes, cameras, microscopes, lab scales, CD players, books etc.—I just cannot afford to make a mess with fine wood dust, for example.

The bottom line? Ok, fine, it is cheap and nasty. If I ever do have an actual workshop, this drill press will be the first thing to go. It just cannot be compared to a proper, bigger, all steel construction drill press with a belt drive. But given the space that I have to work in, it's an entirely workable compromise. Underline compromise. And it was cheap. And it's easily improved by swapping out the chuck for a keyless one (although that may cost you the laser sights), and by adding a vise and some cheap clamps. Yes, it's limited in its dimensions (hey, I needed it to be small!), and noisy, but it is a drill press! I found I needed one, even though I don't have room for one, and now I have one! And it should more than stand up to my infrequent and light use. I hope.

Oh, you noticed how I suggested on multiple occasions that "such-and-such aspect is a bit sub-par", but always essentially followed up with "but I don't mind, because..."? Well, if you fancy yourself the demanding professional, then stay away from this, and get yourself a bigger and more expensive machine to boast about! I mean, why are you even reading this??? Or if you even have the space for anything bigger, then go for something bigger (and heavier)! And splurge on quality—the price only hurts once, but you'll be using the machine for ages to come. But if you need it to be compact, and know that you won't be using it often, then... you know my opinion about this one. Make up your own mind.

Oh, did you come here for an endorsement? A clear-cut black-and-white opinion? The best deal ever vs. steer clear? Sorry for wasting your time.

A serious word of warning!

Wear eye protection! And stuff. You can hurt yourself with power tools. Once is all it takes sometimes. And this bigger machine can maim you worse than a Proxxon mini drill ever can. Watch out, and don't do stupid.

Antti J. Niskanen <uuki@iki.fi>

	The motor unit: The motor is specified at 700 W, and is a Class-II (double insulated) device, so it doesn't need even a safety grounded outlet. Its speed is adjustable between 500 and 2600 RPM, and it provides ample torque even at low speed, even when using bigger hole saws, for example. Its speed does oscillate a bit with the biggest ones, though. But no real complaints here, other than the noise. The gearbox between the motor and the drill spindle (I guess) is rather loud. If you think you've encountered a loud motor or loud bearings in a belt driven drill press, you ain't heard nothing yet! It's ok at 500 RPM, just bearable at 1000 RPM, but crazy at 2600. I'll have to take a look at that gearbox some time, just to see if it's lubed sufficiently. But even if I do goop it up with grease, there's no way it will ever be as quiet as any high quality belt driven drill press. But it's certainly way more compact than any I've seen, which I do appreciate a lot—otherwise I simply wouldn't have room for the thing! And I rarely find myself using the higher speeds anyway. This video, among repair tips, gives a pretty realistic idea of how loud the drill is (at around 4:30 in the video), if you compare it to the guy's voice. One nice thing I noticed is that the drill remembers the last speed it was used on, even if unplugged in between. You can just plug it in, hit the green "ON" (or "I") button, and the speed will be where you left it! You can even adjust the speed up and down with the "+" and "−" buttons without having to turn on the display. The laser, however, will not turn on unless you turn on the display first. There's just a bit of lateral wobble between the motor unit and the column. It's a fraction of a millimeter at the distance of the drill bit. The toothed rack on the column must be preventing the motor unit from rotating around the column, and I guess there's just a bit of extra slop in the guide rails against that toothed rack. I'll have to check if there's anything to tighten up in there to reduce the slop. If I get around to it, that is, as it doesn't seem all that critical in my use, really.
	The laser: Pew! Pew! Wooooosh, Vroooommm, Pew-Pew-Pew-Pew-KABOOOMM!!! With a hand wheel that looks like a spaceship, lasers are a must! :) And they're reasonably well aligned, too. They can be fine-adjusted as shown in this video at around 7 minutes. This is actually the first drill press I've ever used that has laser sights—err, alignment guides. (I didn't even realize line lasers were used for the purpose—I assumed a laser dot would be projected from off-axis, and that it would have to be calibrated according to work piece height. But now it all makes sense!) Until now, I had always used the old-school way: touch the work piece with the drill bit, adjust, repeat, lather, rinse, dry and then drill in anger. Just getting used to the idea of having laser sights on a drill press is the bigger hurdle for me, being the dinosaur that I am. Which is just as well, because the keyless chuck I swapped for the original keyed one just slightly gets in the way of one of the lasers, effectively rendering them useless. So I'll just keep with the old-school method, which is hardly much slower or more tedious, and is more accurate anyway. The convenience of the keyless chuck is far greater than the convenience of the lasers, I feel. But maybe some day I'll look into moving the lasers to better locations, who knows.
	The stand: With a footprint of about 30 cm square, the base is not terribly big, but it's stable enough. The combined base/table is aluminum, which makes it light weight, but of course not nearly as strong or rigid as a steel base. Its machined top surface is almost planar, though not quite. The column attaches to the base with just two screws, but it's stable enough for light duty use. The entire motor unit, chuck and all, moves up and down the column smoothly enough by means of the hand wheel, which looks like a snazzy toy spaceship. It can move way high enough for my purposes, but the jaw is only some 12 cm deep, so be aware that it cannot drill holes further than that from the edge of any board. Look up the specs on the Internet, I won't repeat them here. The column doesn't wobble (at least more than what might be expected from the flexing of a light weight aluminum base) unless you're drilling with a cheap, large-diameter hole saw. (Show me a drill press that doesn't wobble with one of those...!) The clamp: There's a clamp fitted onto the column, which will hold the workpiece down against the table. The videos I saw on the Internet show it in use, but it just looked very... plasticky. Well, color me surprised, the tip of the clamp (the black part) is frigging plastic!!! (The rest of it is quite nice aluminum, though.) I removed the whole thing from the column, as it got in the way of the dust collection system described below. In addition to the plastic clamp, a piece of aluminum L-profile is provided, with thumb screw attachment to the table. Extremely rudimentary, but maybe actually useable for some purpose. (And not fscking plastic!)
	Of course, I bought a small machine vise and haven't touched the included clamping accessories since. One thing is annoying, however: the T-grooves in the table are spaced some 105 mm apart, whereas many vises seem to have a spacing of 133 mm! (Huh, that's 5 1/4 inches—does the standard come from floppy disks?) Also, the slots on various vises seem to be for M12 hardware, whereas the grooves in the table are only 10 mm wide. Is this a diminutive version of some common standard hardware used on Big Machines? Oh well, I've rarely needed to attach a vise anyway while drilling, even with the bigger drill presses I once had at my disposal. I can make do. I also ordered these hold-down clamps (the blue ghings) in various sizes from AliExpress. They will secure a work piece directly to the base very well, although in most cases the vise is more convenient.
	The chuck: This is *not* a keyless chuck!!! Several online retailers advertize the drill as having a keyless chuck, but that is a blatant lie (if perhaps an untentional one perpetuated by copypasting the same description again and again, through AI translation where necessary). However, the truth is out there (on the Net)—and I was aware of the fact when making the purchase, and was already preparing to replace the chuck with a keyless one. But let me just re-iterate here: *The Scheppach DP55 does not* have a keyless chuck! If you want a keyless chuck for the DP55*, you'll need one with a B16 taper bore (i.e.* hole). That will fit directly onto the B16 spindle taper of the drill press ("B16" was imprinted on the side of the original chuck), so don't worry if the arbor (or "adapter", as it were) it's provided with is MT2 or MT3 or whatever on the other side, or if there's no arbor included. Just make sure the chuck itself has a B16 taper bore. I ordered one from AliExpress. It's "Yunrux" branded, very cheap, but actually pretty decent quality. But as you know with AliExpress, Temu, eBay and such... Caveat emptor. Replacing the chuck is described in the drill's manual. Essentially, it says to grab the chuck with one hand, and with the other, use a 27 mm spanner to tighten the nut above it (on the spindle, probably loose, looks like it has no purpose whatsoever) against the chuck to force it off the tapered spindle. In practice, I needed to hold the chuck with a pair of big adjustable pliers, as I tightened the nut against it. Using not an insignificant amount of force, the chuck began to slide out and finally came loose.
	Here's the two chucks side by side, the Scheppach original ("San Ou" branded) on the left, the new keyless one ("Yunrux" branded) on the right. The arbor, which came with the new chuck, will go unused. To install the new keyless chuck, just move the nut back up to where it's not in the way, and slam the replacement chuck in. (Yes, that is the standard installation procedure for tapered chucks. Followed by a light hammer tap or two, if necessary.) This is what the DP55 looks like with the replacement chuck fitted. The new chuck also does wobble a slight bit, just like the original. Hard to say whether both are cheaply made (as they probably are), or if the drill press itself is cheaply made (which it probably is). But the keyless chuck is infinitely more convenient to use. There is one disadvantage, though, to using this keyless chuck. Being quite a bit taller, it gets in the way of one of the line lasers that make up the alignment guides, rendering them useless. I guess I could move that laser to a better location, but that'll be another project unto itself. For now, I'll just make do without. I've been happily drilling with machines without laser sights so far, I think I can survive without them in my home workshop as well. I'm definitely not going back to the keyed chuck, that's for sure!
	Dust collection: I had already made a dust collection system for my Proxxon mini drill setup, so I already had the vacuum cleaner and hoses. I simply took a small plastic bottle of flattish boxy shape, cut out its larger sides, and added a 32 mm sewer pipe fitting to its mouth (I use those to connect to the vacuum system) to make this localized vacuum attachment. I then attached it to the column of the drill press with two hose clamps. It's a bit rough to adjust, but it stays in position, can be moved up and down as needed (though it cannot move further up than the bottom end of the toothed rack—I may have to hack up a better design some day, maybe re-purposing the original clamp the drill press came with), and swings out of the way when not in use. Easy peasy, very effective, and works with all but the tallest work pieces and all but the biggest hole saws. (And it does not even obstruct the laser sights either, unlike my new keyless chuck...) When I do need the biggest hole saws, or have a crazy workpiece, the entire drill press will fit into this box which was the first design I built for my dust collection system. All of this would actually be overkill, if only I had an actual workshop to make a mess in. But since my workshop / lab / nerd cave / room is crammed full of stuff—computers, oscilloscopes, cameras, microscopes, lab scales, CD players, books etc.—I just cannot afford to make a mess with fine wood dust, for example.