The Home Machinist!

If you can use a spiral-point tap it makes life a lot easier since the chip precedes the tap instead of getting bound up in the hole. I use them for all through-holes and on blind holes whenever I have enough material thickness to overdrill the depth sufficient to catch the chip. It can be a nuisanc...

Gosh, Harold, I've never heard of such things with Enco. I dealt with them for a couple of decades and always received excellent service. Same now with MSC. Their people are very knowledgeable and friendly and their prices are actually pretty good if you happen to be an Enco transplant.

Tempering temps depend on the material itself, and will vary by several hundred degrees for the same hardness in different materials. 420 is pretty low for a lot of them.

Magicniner wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 14, 2018 7:52 am

Should be fine unless the data sheet for the material states a maximum tempering time.

This is my understanding as well. Normally its the temperature that's important, not the time (except that the time must be long enough).

Oops. You are correct. I passed too quickly over the descriptions. Like others, in 50 years of using them I've never had a properly fitted Jacobs Taper spin. In fact, the main difficulty for me sometimes is getting them separated, even with a punch or wedge. I do have a very nice Accu-Pro (Spain) ke...

There are several listed here: https://www.mscdirect.com/browse/tn/?searchterm=keyed+chuck+r8&hdrsrh=true#navid=4287782537&searchterm=keyed+chuck+r8&lh=n Although the retail prices shown are fairly high, if you happen to be a 'grandfathered' Enco customer these chucks are from $50 - $200+ cheaper th...

Hey Rich, that's a beautiful solution! 50+ years of drilling and I've never heard anything like it. Gonna try it tomorrow.

SteveM wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 21, 2018 8:07 am

. . .The thing is, with a standard American QC box, you CAN'T do 27tpi. . .

Just depends on the level of lathe. My mid-70's era Sheldon does 27, among a great many (59) other pitches.
On the other hand, I have to use change gears to cut metric threads.

Some of the oil less compressors have outputs in excess of 3-400 lpm. Further they are advertised as quiet and are what is used in hospitals and so on. I think somethings gone skew here??? If you look at those, you'll find they are in the catagory of 'call us for pricing information'. These units a...

. . .despite careful laying-out and center punching the workpieces, they seem determined to walk outside the punch when they first touch the workpiece. . . Spot drills have a very sharp 'point', even better than a split-point. They won't walk out of your punch mark, and the larger ones, say 3/8 and...

For years I just punched a hole with a torch. There's no precision required here. Plasma would be even cleaner. I was doubtful when I saw my mentor do this, but it works just fine.

A lot of aluminum stock has that problem, and a lot of it isn't round. A lot of tubing has irregular wall-thickness too, and this from reputable dealers. You have to check the specs. As for collets, they're available in 1/64th increments. Gradually filling the gaps in your collection with imports at...