Harvey Tools is launching a new “Intelligent Drill Press,” which they’ve decided to call “Sniper.”
The new Harvey Sniper drill press is described as a “next generation drilling solution designed to transform how precision hole-making is performed.”
It features an “AI powered targeting system” that uses “advanced sensors, smart positioning algorithms, and intelligent control systems.”
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Harvey says the new smart drill press is “suitable for small shops and advanced hobbyists.”
They add that “no existing product on the market combines these features in a standalone drill press form factor.”
Harvey also recently launched an “Intelligent” band saw – Harvey Launched a Smarter Woodworking Bandsaw.
It’s not exactly clear what you get with “AI powered targeting” or “smart targeting,” but this is just the latest “smart” drill press.
Laguna launched one a few months ago – see Laguna Launched a Modern Drill Press – and Nova has one too (we bought one a few years ago).
We don’t know much more about the Harvey Tools Sniper drill press, model SD-20. They’ve hyped up its smartness and AI features, but so far they haven’t actually said much about what it can do or how.
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blocky
My 10 year old rice cooker has ‘fuzzy logic’ circuitry to adjust temperature and estimate timing on the fly – does that qualify as ai-powered?
TomD
Now it does, for certain!
It’s really hard to tell when you have useless marketing gimmicks vs actual helpful autoadjusting. A rice cooker that compensates for a step nobody ever does (rinse the rice say) is worthwhile.
One that just has a bad timer is not.
Bonnie
Can the marketers convince themselves? Then yes it can! AI has become an almost meaningless buzzword these days.
Josh
Had a fuzzy logic boost controller in the late 90’s
So far ahead of its time
Scott F
I did not re read the Harvey bandsaw article, but if I remember correctly it was the same schtick.. trying to sell AI in a tool without any substance to why/how it improves the experience. This seems the same – pretty much a “who cares”
Is Harvey a name that has long history/is known for doing anything special in the tool world or technology world? Or just a company putting a screen on a tool and taking using the latest buzzwords to hype up sales?
MM
From what I’ve seen Harvey seems to market heavily with gimmicky “smart” electronic features. The bandsaw Stuart talked about a while back has a voice-activated light and a sky-high price tag, but it lacks any sort of variable speed.
Sensors, screens, AI function, etc? No thank you. I like that the emergency stop switch is extremely conspicuous though. They got that right.
Heavier castings, gear drive, power feed, power elevation on the table, flood coolant, mechanical reversing clutch? These are good features. I’d rather Harvey focus on those things.
Stuart
The “smart” functions are new. A lot of their tools have different shticks, not all of them gimmicky, such as the “gyro” dust collector.
John
AI is reaching the stage of moronic. Just don’t care, and for the most part I am completely turned off by any company claiming AI crap.
kent_skinner
LOL. More marketing schmuck word salad.
One more item to throw in the landfill when the electronics die in 5 or 10 years. When Harvey announced their “AI Bandsaw” a while back on social media, I asked how long they would promise to stock replacement electronics. They chose to not reply.
In a landscape of more and more tools getting pointless electronics that ensure an early end of life, this seems like the temporary king.
Electronics that serve a real, solid purpose (Saw Stop, for example) or allow the tool to function when the electronics die (digital tachometer on an otherwise mechanical drill press) are fine. But WHY do tools have to join the ranks of appliances that are junk in less than a decade?
My mom’s oven (mid range GE) died in 8 years, when the circuit board failed. Of course there’s no parts available for it, so into the landfill it goes. This drill press will be in the same pile soon enough.
Not all of my tools are old, but my woodshop is built on old US made cast iron tools that are 25-90 years old and are still fantastic. Accurate, reliable, rebuildable/repairable… Unisaw, Delta 14″ bandsaw, Wood Wizzard 12″ band saw, Yates American 20″ band saw, PM 36″ edge sander, PM lathe – all of them purchased for $0.10 on the dollar and will outlive me with a new belt every 25 years and brearings every 50. I just don’t get it.
There’s a place for electronics; I’m not anti-tech where it makes sense (typing this on a computer using Starlink for internet access, listening to streaming music and powering it all with solar).
I have to admit that I was interested in the Harvey Gyro dust collector, but I just can’t trust them any more.
Will
My wood shop stationary tools are a Walker-Turner table saw and drill press from the early 1950s, a Delta Unisaw Jr. and 6″ jointer from the 1950s, and a Makita planer from the 1980s. Can still find most parts for all of them (though I’ve had to do some digging for the table saw), and they’re still quite accurate!
fred
I was chuckling reading your words and thinking about my drill presses – one a Walker Turner radial arm one that is nearly as old as me – and will likely be still workup when it is 100 years old.
While I continue to look forward to true advancements in machine and hand tool technology – I’m reminded of the old advice: “be not the first by which the new is tried – nor yet the last to set the old aside.”
Goodie
I generally agree. Go cast iron and you are in good shape. As an aside, I bought a nearly 20 year old SawStop last year. It’s a great saw, 5hp and 52 inch rip capacity. I recently got a note from them that they have a conversion kit for $379 that will allow me to convert it from the original (CB) configuration to the new ICS configuration. This involves replacing several components (new contactor box, electronics, and arbor block). I will be replacing all of the belts and pulleys, so the only component that is old will be the electric motor. I realize SawStop is a company that is a bit controversial, but I have to say their customer service and support for this older saw is first rate. I’m also very glad that they built the electronics so that they essentially bolt onto my existing cast iron saw and that I can upgrade it over time (20 years after production). I’ll be very curious to see if Harvey will be able to offers this sort of electronic upgrade 20 years from now, but I won’t be counting on it.
fred
We once were a society where nearly everything was constantly repaired until total decrepitude made that impossible. My mother darned socks, the TV repairman came to the house, a guy (tinkerer) with a truck drove around to sharpen knives and mend pots and other metal objects. The nearly constant advances of technology, demands on our time, our valuing leisure pursuits and many other factors have done away with all of this. We now fill the landfills up with our detritus that include many small power tools – and even larger machine tools. We have come to accept that it is often more efficient to replace than to repair. Comments on ToolGuyd seem to support the notion that many of us are involved in a quest to seek out the newest and best. We ask questions like “when will manufacturer X get around to updating tool Y” – sometimes even though tool Y might still be perfectly capable of decent work. We want advancements that improve our productivity, enhance our capabilities and safety. But we want them too at an attractive price – that sometimes requires “value engineering” (aka making compromises.) Constant improvement is a good thing – but it sometimes comes with unintended consequences – like electronics that are not long-term serviceable.
kent_skinner
I’ve wondered how they would deal with failing electronics over the years. Nice to see them do it right.
Stuart
That’s what led me to buy a SawStop over a Harvey table saw. SawStop does have great customer support, and they have a large catalog of replacement parts.
Patent-related reputation and sentiment issues aside, they’re likely to pose a big competitive threat if or when they expand outside of table saws.
MM
My stationary power tools are the same. I have Monarch, Lion and Weipert lathes. DoAll bandsaws. Kearney & Trecker milling machines. Carlton radial drill, a Rockford openside shaper…all 1940’s through 1960’s heavy industrial machines, except the Lion lathe is from the 1980’s. All those machines are very easy to work on and parts are still available. Belts, bearings, electronic parts are all ordinary off-the-shelf items.
Jared
I don’t understand this marketing angle. Hearing it has “AI” begs the question: “what can it do?”
If there’s no obvious answer to that question… I’m not interested. Is anyone?
Daniel L
AI is just this season’s crypto.
Blockchain, cloud, yada blah.
Its all headed for a huge correction once folks realize it’s not gonna *actually* do the jobs that people do.
Tim
Lol this is true, but not in the way you mean it. 15 years ago we were cracking jokes about “the cloud” and companies were using it as a buzzword they didn’t understand. Today, the cloud is so ubiquitous you don’t even notice how much we depend on it.
AI is the same. Harvey doesn’t know what it is right now, but by 2035 it’ll be so embedded we won’t even think about it.
John
This is dumb and they should be embarrassed. The worst part is, isn’t not like you couldn’t use AI to improve a drill press. With a modern VFD and feedback you could do all kinds of cool things. Imagine tapping holes without any additional hardware – I put a VFD on my drill press and now it can start and stop instantly and run very slowly. They could actually be doing cool things with this. Instead they’re putting an expensive screen on a mediocre drill press and marketing it in a way that is offensively ignorant.
Nick
They are doing those things, though. They are doing a horrible job rolling out the marketing, they really are only talking about in person at AWFS. A group I’m in has some folks reporting back, and it does have a VFD, a tapping mode, and depth warning. And some mention of a self-centering quill, which is where the AI comes in, I think.
Goodie
Good to hear this, because their marketing isn’t doing anything to convince me that these machines are compelling. I hope they can find a better way to communicate their features and innovation to potential customers. The ads for the (very expensive) digital bandsaw and for this drill press have missed the mark.
William Adams
Some of that can probably be attributed to the language barrier — I’m grateful that they took over Bridge City Tool Works, but limitations in their power tools (e.g., the lack of multiple speed on their bandsaw) keep me from considering them (and I am shopping for a bandsaw for re-sawing lumber…)
MM
I’m curious about the Bridge City takeover. I was not into finer woodworking at the time that happened, but I am now, and from what I’ve read and seen videos of online it seems that there are a lot of QC problems with Harvey-era Bridge City tools, with several people reporting major issues like high-dollar hand-planes whose sole is not flat out of the box. I don’t have any firsthand experience with either era of Bridge City tools currently, but I’m surprised to read that someone is happy about Harvey having taken them over. What, in your opinion, improved?
Robert
Richard Hamilton is here at AWFS and has been hanging out at the Harvey Tools booth. Hopefully he will show this new drill press on a future Cool Tools episode so we can see more about the features.
Nick
Richard Hamilton (Stumpy Nubs) has gone hard for his sponsor Harvey Woodworking, and I now have a hard time trusting what he says about them. He just got a paid trip to China to check out their factory, and although a bit interesting, it was amazingly uncritical.
I too am looking forward to his preview of these new tools, but basically will treat it as if Harvey was running the episode, with Hamilton’s slightly better marketing compared to Harvey’s odd approach.
ColeTrain
I just watched an episode of Bitchen rides and made me wonder when the AI power hammer is coming because…. Hilarious! Everybody be worried about the rise of the machines but naaa. One cold solder joint and skynet falls.
Nick
Stuart, you should look at what is going on with Nova. I was about to get a Nova Voyager drill press, and then it disappeared from all the resellers. Now they seem to only be selling Lathes direct, and drill presses have not be in stock for 6+ months. Sounds like part of the company went bankrupt, and then they got pissed about tariffs, but I can’t quite figure it out.
Stuart
I don’t have any contacts there but will see what I can find out.
It looks like it’s backordered, and like you said the tariffs might have impacted things. Have you asked Nova for an ETA?
Nick
They haven’t responded.
Hugo
As well as the AI marketing BS, I also dislike that this is called “Sniper”. I would never have something in my shop labelled like that. It feels like a cynical marketers attempt to capture their caricatured idea of what American’s like.
As with other commenters, for anything that mechanically should be capable of lasting 50+ years, I avoid superfluous electronics (and also generally avoid screens in the workshop anyway…).
Stuart
Agreed; I hate the name.
Ryan
It would be nice for a drill press to have a feature where it can adapt the rpm to the hardness of the material you’re drilling, maybe a sensor to warn you when the bit starts to flex so you can avoid breaking it. But this doesn’t sound like either of those.
Stuart
With some of the new smarter drill presses – I don’t know about this one – you can set the speed based on the material being drilled into and the size of the accessory.
MM
This is a challenging problem to solve with technology. It’s easy enough to compute the ideal RPM and feed rate for machining under optimum conditions–there’s tons of software that does this, and in years past they used to give machinists little cards or cardboard slide-rule ‘calculators’ that you could look up those on. Old DoAll bandsaws have a rotary device on the front of the saw where you dial the material and thickness you want to cut and it shows you the recommended cutting speed.
But. And this is a really big BUT: that assumes a perfectly rigid setup. The moment you have to drill or cut something that’s oddly shaped or might flex on you then those calculations are useless. They also don’t take into account how sharp the cutter might be, or whether or not chips are clearing properly from deep holes, if you’re making an interrupted cut, working with sketchy material like highly figured wood, etc. Blindly trusting speeds & feeds from a book or a calculator is a great way to ruin your workpiece and possibly hurt yourself.
Fortunately, what you CAN do is pay attention to the sound the bit makes and the appearance of the swarf. Your eyes and ears are your sensors. They tell you if the bit is dull, if your RPMs are too high, or if you’re feeding too fast. Pay careful attention to the chips: what color are they? How thick are they? Are you getting uniform chips from all the flutes/cutters on the bit or is that inconsistent? Are the chips packing in the hole or are they flowing freely? Do you feel any vibration back up through the quill handle? You can pay attention to heat too. Do you smell the workpiece burning? See dark marks on wood or plastic? You’ve got a dull bit or excessive speed. If you’re drilling metal using coolant you can see it foam or hiss to steam if things are getting too hot. Listen as well: is the bit squealing or chattering?
fred
Sage words! The best tool is still not a substitute for training and acquiring the skills to use it.
Steve
So….looks like they are throwing in a few cheap and unnecessary sensors and a digital display and calling it AI. I’m sure this machine comes with a steep price tag because of that. Human eyes and hands are capable of processing far more information than this drill press. If AI were needed, wouldn’t it be in a CNC machine?
IronWood
Nope. I can move Harvey from “unlikely” to “never” on my potential supplier list. So many things about this that make me cringe.
Mr. C
Ayy-Eye isn’t a product created to solve a problem. It never was meant to.
Current AI is utter slop. It was only created to refine the technology, so that later revisions and developments can be sold off or directly used for its only intended purpose:
—To reduce labor.—
It’s designed to get people to interact with it, to train it, to reinforce it. It’s free real-world development. Crowd-sourcing.
That’s why they’re shoveling it down everyone’s throats. It’s on every device and service — phones, Windows, Macs, in email, etc. Seriously, there’s a button on the keyboard now. Even Microsoft Office is being renamed to Microsoft Copilot 365.
Macs are enabling it by default during their OS updates. At least they asked you in the past — YES or MAYBE LATER were your only options. No respect for YOUR preferences.
Even things that don’t use AI (like weighted test scores and car jump starters…and now drill presses) are claimed to be run via AI.
—-
They NEED your data.
They NEED people to use it.
They NEED people to become comfortable with it being everywhere, so that it’s normalized.
And under NO circumstances are you allowed to turn it off or disable it.
# All so they can turn it from pile of junk to a pink slip.
—–
## Repeat after me: YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.
Say NO to AI for class solidarity. We are all laborers. Let’s not train our replacement for free.
Josh
Think of the horses right
Mr. C
Please show me when horses were training automobiles…
If workers won’t advocate for their own self-worth and preservation, then that answers the C-suite and owners question of “Should we take them seriously? Ever?”
Stuart
PLEASE STAY ON TOPIC!
Josh
I have a Nova drill press, I like it enough that I don’t regret the reconditioned price I paid, I think it was 980 shipped.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to have another “dumb” drill press where you just turn it on and it spins when using the tiny drum sander or wire wheel attachment but not enough to ever actually look for one on CL lol.
If i remember correctly the “smart feature” on the Harvey bandsaw was blade tension and that was it. I guess that’s better than the pointer gauge on my delta or my big aggazoni?? Not so sure personally but the YT influencers sure think so
blocky
What are the moral implications of imbuing a drill press with intelligence? Or of selling and buying a sentient drill press. And what if it does not consent to drilling? What if, after much jockeying and deliberation, it convinces me not to drill? What if I cast off my real life human connections in favor of its confidence? What if we fall in love, and love is never wrong.
Stuart
Who says that your other modern tools aren’t already sentient?
As for AI vs real life human connections, many major news outlets ran the same story this week about teens saying they’re using AI for friendship. e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-digital-friendship-with-teens-common-sense-media-study/
blocky
oh man, i was a lonely kid; i remember spending empty hours typing at early language-learning bots.
I’d probably have lost a year or two of my life sounding the depths.
I think of Ai as power tool – useful, when chosen and applied appropriately; potentially very damaging when wielded inattentively.
Blaine
AI: it does the job wrong, or does something completely different, and lies convincingly about the outcome.
Scott ALKB
Don’t abbreviate “bill of materials” at the airport, and don’t talk about this product either.