Mastering Accuracy: The Must-Have Drill Press Accessory #woodworking #drillpress

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Dixie today but we are going to be taking a look at a tool made by wixie welcome to Flynn

dog woodwork now I featured a couple of wixie tools on this channel already and I've been

pretty impressed so let's take a look at this latest wixie tool and see if it lives up to my

expectations now about a month ago I purchased the wixie digital readout for my planer and I've

been really impressed with how accurate this tool is and how easy it was to install and if

you haven't seen that video go check it out as it really is a game changer for the planer and

I can honestly say after using this thing for about a month it was well worth the money and

in fact if you watch my circle puzzle video I posted a couple of weeks ago I use that wixie

to plane down all my wood to a half inch exactly and that was a project that needed total Precision

in order to get those puzzle pieces to slide together easily and since I was so impressed

with the first wixie tool I purchased I went down the wixie rabbit hole and discovered all sorts

of digital tools that this company makes and they make everything digital everything from compasses

to calipers to digital angle finders as well as table saw fences so let's take a look at what I

got and I'll tell you why I purchased it so this tool is the wixie drill press laser let's take a

closer look at what comes in the box so if you know me you know I love Simplicity and that's

what we have here I'm a simple man making his way through the Galaxy like my father before me just a

few items in the box we have the laser itself a hose clamp the instructions and just a few nuts

and bolts so judging from just a few parts I expect this to be an easy installation so let's

take this over to the drill press and I'll tell you why I got this so if you've been watching this

channel you'll know that my newest best friend is this Nova drill press hello bestie and I've

absolutely loved this tool so far I only have two complaints and that's that it doesn't have onboard

lighting as well as a laser Crosshair now onboard lighting is easy enough to solve with one of these

magnetic sewing machine lights what is it what is it it's a sewing machine it's a sewing machine

and ironically there's a little light bulb right here but the laser was just a little

bit more difficult to solve I wanted to get a quality high-end laser for this high-end

tool so I'm going to stop gabbing and we're going to get this wixi installed on this Nova

so the nice thing about this laser is that it can accommodate small

medium and large drill presses since I'm dealing with a larger

drill press I'm going to unscrew these two bolts and apply the extension wing

so now that we have the extension Wing removed we're now going to reattach it

to the laser with this concave part facing away from that laser and to do this we're

going to use the two extra washers nuts and bolts that are included in the packaging

and we'll tighten down both of these bolts with a couple of wrenches

now that we have the extension Wing installed we're now going to reinstall the two support

posts and this is easily done just by adding the two bolts and washers

now just like that digital planar readout that I got

a couple of months ago this device does not come with batteries so you're going

to need a couple of double a batteries introducing the Mercedes double a class

the first fully electric luxury sedan powered entirely by double a batteries

next we're going to Loosely affix the pipe clamp to the column of our drill press

next we're going to take our wixie and we're going to put the two support Columns of the wixi inside

of that pipe clamp and then we're going to slide it up to the very top of the drill press once

we have the wixi roughly centered on the drill press we can then tighten it down to the column

so now that we have this wixi firmly affixed to the column of the drill press let's turn this

thing on and start to calibrate it to turn this thing on there's a small on and off switch on

the left hand side of the wixie so if we take a look at where my lasers are in relation to

my drill press quill you can see we have a lot of work to do so let's go over to the assembly table

and start calibrating this machine so the first thing that I want to do is to take the flattest

surface on my shop which is my table saw then I want to take a board that rests completely flat

on top of that surface once we've confirmed that the bottom edge of this board is completely flat

I now want to strike a line with my Square somewhere about in the center of this board

so I've clearly labeled what the top of this board is and the bottom of the board

we're going to set this piece of wood to the side for a bit and move on to our next step

so I've clearly got a forstner bit installed in my drill press and this isn't going to work for

calibration so I want to take a 1 16 of an inch drill bit and install it into my drill press

now that we have that smaller bit installed we need to start talking about the X Y and Z axis

of this wixy laser so on the left hand side of the machine there's a little knob that you can twist

left and right and this is the x-axis of the laser let's turn off the lights and I'll show you how

this affects the laser so if I turn that knob on the left hand side of the laser you can see I can

adjust the x-axis quite extensively it has a wide range of motion so that you can get exactly where

you need to be in the same fashion there's also a knob on the right hand side I've seen knobs before

have you yeah you've seen knobs all the time and this is the y-axis let's turn off the lights once

again and I'll show you how this affects the laser so just like before when we adjusted the left

laser we can also adjust the right laser and as you can see it has the same wide range of motion

so now that we know we can adjust the X and the y-axis of the lasers I'm going

to take a scrap piece of plywood and we're going to drill our first hole

so with our scrap wood in place I'm going to drill out a hole with a 1 16 inch bit

now it may be a little bit difficult to see here since this is such a small hole

but here's the hole we just drilled out now we can adjust the X and the y-axis to intersect

with that hole now with the lights turned off so you can easily see those lasers I'm

going to adjust the X and the y-axis so it completely intersects with that hole

so now that we have the X and the y-axis intersecting exactly where we drilled that

hole now we can start thinking about the z-axis remember that piece of wood well

we're going to use it now so the z-axis of the lasers refers to the laser lines

that are going up and down this board these need to be completely parallel to that line

we struck in the center of this board earlier by having the z-axis centered this will allow

us to adjust the drill press table and make sure our crosshairs are exactly where they

need to be no matter where our drill press table is at so let's take a look at how we

can adjust that z-axis so that we can get all those lines parallel so to adjust the z-axis

of the laser there's a little flat head screw here that you can adjust left or right this is

what we're going to move left and right to make sure that all of our lines are parallel and just

like what the X and the y-axis there's a little Flathead screw on both sides of the wixi this

allows you to adjust each laser so that we're completely parallel so I'm going to turn those

screws on both sides of the wixie so that we can make sure all of our lines are parallel

and now that we know our z-axis is completely calibrated we now just need to do our final

calibration on the X and the y-axis so I'll repeat the process of drilling a

hole in my scrap piece of plywood and then we'll adjust the X and the y axis

so you may be asking why didn't you just do an X and A Y calibration after the Z

calibration for me it's all about getting the most precise calibration that I can that first

calibration with the X and the Y was just to get a ballpark range of where my X needed to

be and by X I mean crosshairs now there's a few videos out there that show you how

to calibrate this machine however none of them show you how to do the Z calibration

and that Z calibration is really important if you ever want to move your table up or down

so that's it folks we're fully calibrated I'm going to drill some holes out with some

pencil marks that I made on a scrap piece of wood and we'll see how accurate it is

well it's gonna be hard to see here but each one of those holes was perfectly drilled and

I can tell that because all the pencil markings I made are completely gone it drilled exactly where

my pencil marked so if your drill press doesn't have a laser or is completely inaccurate this

wixie may get you back on track I know I couldn't be more happy that my Nova now has its crosshairs

as well as its light well thanks for joining me today on checking out this wixy drill press laser

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it really does help out this small woodworking Channel until next time take care as always

thank you