Mobile Boring Machine Fabricated by Green Star Builders
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Fabricated Mobile Boring Unit
A homeowner contacted Green Star Builders to add a railing made with stainless steel posts of 2 ¼” diameter onto his existing brick and concrete cantilevered patio. Ordinarily, these posts would have been installed BEFORE the brick was set. The homeowner didn’t want to remove brick he had so meticulously set, so I started researching ways to bore a perfectly clean hole 8” deep into brick and concrete.
I found a range of water-supplied boring machines that weighed upwards of 500 lbs. with a price range that started at $14,000! After analyzing what they did and how they did it, I decided that I would make my own. It wound up being lightweight, able to be disassembled and set up in place by one person, and cost me under $1,000 to build.
Using I-beam leftover from a previous project as the main part of the base, I built locking outrigger wheels with leveling feet at each wheel so that the unit could be rolled into place, then locked and leveled in the exact location needed. Large diamond coring bits combined with water swivel adaptor allows water to be injected inside of a slowly spinning diamond edges cylinder. To power the unit, I mounted a long-throat variable speed drill press that became my main drill press in the shop when disconnected from the mobile, it mounts back on its original shaft and assembly.
It works perfectly. I can now easily bore holes into any cementicious surface. Since the initial use, we have used this unit on top of a cement wall where we needed to add railing sections.
