VFD for drill press

[routercnc]

I mentioned to a colleague that changing belts on my drill press was a bit of a pain and he said some people had used Sturmey Archer bike hub gears instead of the pulleys and can then change to lots of speeds. They are pretty strong to take the pedalling loads. Then you just have a lever on the side of the machine to select the gear.
Or some of the fancy drill presses have a pair of cones to give a range of continuously variable speeds without even stopping the machine. Again sliding a lever selects the speed. Probably an expensive option though?