I am curious if any new drill presses are actually made in the USA.
Jet/Powermatic/Wilton is now owned by a NYC venture capital fund, but most of their drill presses are sourced from Taiwan and China, except the Swedish ones. Do they still make any Powermatic tools in the USA? As far as I know, Powermatic is only selling one model now, and its a bit wimpy for my needs- a 1hp single phase machine that has a lowest speed of 250 rpm. Not what I need. $1600, its basically a home woodshop machine.
like the OP, I am beginning to consider a new drill press, and I dont want a cheap chinese woodworking model.
I can get a Taiwan built 3phase Jet gear head for about 2 grand, new, from Equipment Sales, the Jet outlet. I had a friend who bought one for his fab shop, and he did relatively large work with it, and liked it.
A new Alzmetal or Solberga from Willis would be nice- not made in USA, but quality, but they dont list prices online, and my guess would be they are going to be more than the $5k to $6 mentioned. Wouldnt surprise me at all if a bigger Alzmetal was over ten grand, new.
I am not really interested in restoring a box of parts. I may end up searching til I find a used Alzmetal, but often times when I have the money is when I have a project that needs to be done NOW- so I have mostly bought new tools, and the relative lack of time spent maintaining them has been well worth it in my mind. I dont regret for a minute buying a new ironworker, angle rolls, or power hammer, for example. So if there was a decent gear head drill press available new in the $3k to $5k range, I would probably go for one.
One thing I am pretty sure of- NOBODY, globally, makes a decent bench model drill press anymore.
Sure, there are teeny little modelmaking and watchmakers machines, but I have not seen a single new, 2 or 3hp, gear head, 3 phase, bench model, especially with power downfeed and tapping. That is what I really want, but I dont think they exist.
