Question
I'm in the market for a new horizontal/vertical construction boring machine, and am weighing options. My preferences is to either bore vertically from the top or bottom. What are the advantages of each? My current machine bores vertically from the top and the problem is worn quick change (insert and twist) collets often drop their holder and bit when the machine stops. It seems gravity would eliminate that on a bottom that issue.
What's the preference on brand? I'm leaning toward Ayen or Gannomat as those seem to be the two top rated machine brands. Any advantage of one over the other? Any particular model to look for or avoid? Use will be initially for confirmat but I may pursue dowel at a later time.
Forum Responses
(Cabinetmaking Forum)
From contributor L:
I've had (in the past) a drill from bottom machine, advantage - dust falls clear, disadvantage - once in a rare while it would have been nice to see the drill point during setup. Side note on later using the machine for doweling - this would imply using a hand held dowel inserter or doing it totally by hand. Neither are good options if you do much of it. For doweling you'd want a machine that drills, injects the glue and drives all the dowels in one shot. Then you'd want a case clamp to be able to fully seat the dowels quickly. I don't know what your anticipated volume or product is but confirmats work well until you can justify more automated equipment. We went to doweling using a CNC bore and insert machine because we do a lot of odd sized items. For kitchen cabinets the machines with fixed, multiple inserters seem like a better deal.
Any properly designed fences/stops will insure that the joints always line up. I don't know either machine so I cannot comment. Assuming both are well designed, the only advantage of face drilling from the top is both face and end drilling are done with the outside of the box/panels against the table. I much prefer the tidiness of drilling from the bottom. I even bought a prototype hinge boring machine that drills from the bottom - a great idea, but poorly designed and I haven't had time to work on it.
