Last week I bought myself a little 8'' Grizzly Baby Drill Press. It arrived yesterday and today I assembled it and drilled a few holes to test it out. While I haven't spent much time with it I can safely say that as long as the motor doesn't burn out on me I'll be really happy with it.
I was thinking about getting a Wen from Amazon but I didn't like how the belt drive worked by adding pressure rather than by just moving the belt to new pulleys. I had seen positive reviews of Grizzly and after doing some research on them and finding that they tended to rate just about as well as the Wens do I figured I might as well give it a shot. It was like $95 USD direct from their site and shipping was like $18, so for me it was cheaper than getting it from Amazon where it was about $130.
It took me about 20-30 minutes or so to build, so it came together pretty quickly. I feel like a good chunk of that time was spent assembling the guard, so if you omit that piece it may save you 5-10 minutes. I feel like the guard may get in the way with the clamp since the table is so small, but it can be removed if it becomes an issue. Most reviewers seemed to like it so I figured I'd start with it and then remove it if it gave me issues. I checked it out with a speed square and it was surprisingly tight: the chuck and the column were perfectly square. The table was a tad bit off from the column, but not by any degree that would make a difference for anything I'm drilling. I'm not putting together rockets here or anything.
This press is tiny and weighs probably 30 or so pounds, so it is really small, which I wanted since I'll only be using this for enclosures and little projects around the house. I've got it clamped on to one of those little portable workbenches from Craftsman and it actually felt pretty steady. I would say that the thing that I see as the biggest knock on it is the small table, but with an 8'' press I don't think you can really expect more. It is also really quiet, which is nice.
As far as how it works? It drills holes. It went through an aluminum enclosure very easily, which it ought to. There's no lasers or lights or anything, but for $100 I won't complain (but I'd probably never get the laser to line up anyways!). Like I said: as long as the motor doesn't die out and the chuck doesn't break I can't see any reason to complain.
Here's a quick photo to give a little sense of the size. If you're familiar with those little Craftsman portable workbenches you can see it hardly takes up much real estate on it:
Update Edit:
I've used this to drill out a few enclosures now and I just wanted to say that I still have no reason to complain and I really like this little press. I am using it on the lowest speed with step bits. I still use my hand drill for the pilot holes as it goes much faster that way.
I ended up removing the guard - it was just getting in the way. There is already a really small amount of real estate and that guard was just taking too much of it. I am usually the person who leaves guards on tools but I'd never even seen a guard on a drill press till I started looking at these models and it just took up way too much space. I think that I will try to find myself a smaller clamp as well as it can be a little hard to maneuver it with the 9'' one so I think I will get myself a 6' clamp.
For drilling enclosures this thing is pretty awesome. The holes are much cleaner and straighter, and there is very little filing/cleanup needed after drilling now. The process is a little slower than my hand drill because of the table setup time when changing from drilling out the front of the enclosure to the top, but I think it is worthwhile. The size of this press seems perfect for this kind of work. I would say the only thing that keeps this from being perfect is the fact that it doesn't have a crank to raise and lower the table. That would be a pretty solid upgrade to this machine but not a deal breaker.