Summary

This is a device that helps you center objects, and find the drill center point, on your drill press. Using lasers!

I got the idea from watching R+D bazillionaire genius Dan Gelbart's amazing videos posted to YouTube, just like this guy also seems to have done. Also note that in that second link Dan Gelbart himself chimes in with some tips for how you can adjust your laser to get very fine accuracy. Focusing lasers! Mirrors! Things I basically didn't do here, but which it would be possible to add to this design. Please let me know if you remix this design with improvements!

The general idea is that the laser, by being angled and spinning along with the drill chuck, creates a circle in addition to a point (when the chuck is at the proper height). The point is handy obviously to find out where the drill is going to hit. But the circle is also handy, because when you align the outside edges of the circle with some reference, you know that the drill will be hitting the center of that reference. You can use this to find the center of strangely-shaped objects, pipes, or just plain ol' rectilinear lumber. Rad!

If you've got an OnShape account, you can view/copy/remix/dance party the parametric version of this here.

Update 2017.01.03: I added a version for 45mm drill press chucks.

Update 2018.06.28: If you like this, make sure to check out Nalmo's Remix which solves a lot of problems with my design.