As I mentioned in a previous post I used to do a lot of small hole drilling usually on a Myford ML7 lathe.
Even with pressure lube to the bearing this was only really good for about 1100 revs on the white metal bearings.
that's far too low for 1mm or 40 thou drills so I built a powered tailstock out of an old fan motor.
I won't go into details as every lathe is different but basically it was a new tailstock barrel bored thru, two bearings and a jack shaft driving a tiny chuck that was small enough to fit thru the tailstock.
The motor had a tufnol slider plate screwed to the terminal box to give support, the motor was rated at 3,000 rpm opposite to the machines 1100 rpm so the true drill speed was 4,100 rpm, a far better call from standard.
JS.
