I'm looking to add a small arbor press to my hobby tools. I have a couple of those nice corner punches that I use to make door and window holes in sheet styrene for scratchbuilds. You could use a small hammer to strike the punches, but that's not very precise and everything else on the bench jumps each time you hit the punch. What I do now is take my punch and materials down into the workshop where I have my full size drill press. I don't turn on the drill press, just use it as a precision punch. Workable, but a bit of a hassle to trek up and down the stairs from the 2nd floor (layout) to the basement (workshop) and back. Hence the arbor press idea. Some of them that I'm looking at have magnets to hold the punch in place, and it looks like I could wrap the end of the punch with masking tape to fit better into the hole, if needed. I just need to keep the wobble to a minimum. Some high end models use set screws, which sound like a better idea... maybe. I don't want to spend a lot of money on this, so if anyone has a recommendation for a usable hobby-sized arbor press, I would love to hear it. Thanks.
There is one on Harbor Freight for $60. It doesn’t say much about how to attach bits, but it looks to be similar to the Amazon one you show.https://www.harborfreight.com/1-ton-arbor-press-3552.html
Yep, the Harbor Freight press gets mentioned a lot. There are many videos online about it, mostly showing how to rebuild it to make it reasonably useful. LOL
That seems to be the common "complaint" with Harbor Freight tools. I've used many of there tools for building RC airplanes and model railroad. There isn't many things that are lighter duty than punching styrene and cutting balsa wood. Many of the complaints or reviews I read are trying to compare it to the multi thousand dollar tool they use at work. Here's the quick version...it's not meant to replace a high end machine. They almost always work great for the general hobbyist. I've had a few things that were broken right out of the box, and Harbor Freight exchanged them no problems.
That's a good point. I like Harbor Freight for tools that I won't need often, but are more or less irreplaceable in certain circumstances. I have an HF nearby, I should just go look and see what their press is like before I bash it.
