BIG HOLE

--Searching Enco was your first mistake! ;-) If you anticipate having to do this sort of thing on a regular basis you really need some kind of milling machine and a rotary table. Trepanning can be done, but you'll need a mill or a lathe for rigidity to use this tool anyway. Rotary table costs about the same as a good trepanning tool and it's a good bit more versatile. Safer, too, IMO.

Pretty far. Lunar landings.

What is the Met Bureau?

mj

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:00:57 -0700, michael vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

There _have_ been a few Apollo missions whose distance was a bit unplanned....

AT LAST! A BITE! GOD it's been painful waiting!

Those people who try to predict the weather.

LOVE is never having to say you are sorry......

I'm pretty sure using a wood router is a recipe for a lot of

No way. Routing aluminum works great.

When my building was almost finished and the door guys were coming I realized the factory had neglected to ship the door frame. Using a generator to power a skill saw with a carbide because the power wasn't yet tuned on I cut up a bunch of 4 x 2 x 1/4 channel and 3 x 3 3 1/4 angle and had the local weld shop do the welding. Boy was that loud! and chips everywhere! But it worked great. ERS

Depending on how much you want to abuse your table saw, you can also cut mild steel using a Morse Metal Devil blade (or the Tenryu).

And in the "way too much abuse" category, I just finished cutting around 200 linear feet of .5" slate tile in my tablesaw using a diamond saw blade. I put contact paper down on the table and fence and made a sled for the tiles. Worked great doing the miters for the edging, also. It did take more than an hour to clean all the dust out of the shop ;-) I found out quickly why people use wet saws.

Years ago, I needed to open up the upper engine case on a 4 cylinder motorcycle engine for a big bore kit. The cylinder studs were removed, and a woodworking router with a high speed steel bit was used to open up the case bores, set for a depth of about 7/8". Skim cuts were taken in a circular fashion around the rim of the hole, and it worked great.

RJ

We used high speed steel 200 tooth plywood type blades on a Makita chop saw at work to cut thousands and thousands of 1/4" X 1" brass flat bars for over 18 years, with no issues, other than noise. The operator would make the cut in about a second. I cringed whenever I heard it, but it worked.

RJ

Correction. That should have read as a 100 tooth blade in my previous post.

RJ

Did you use a guide, or was this free-hand?

Joel. phx

I just wish they wouldn't shout so much.

Free hand, using a heavily scribed circle on a blued aluminum surface.

RJ

Damn!! You're brave AND good!! "

I can think of one. 13.

Martin

Chuckle.. I grew up in a cabinet shop as a kid. The key here is that you are SKIM cutting around the hole with the router moving in a clockwise direction around the hole. This produces conventional milling. An opposite direction around the hole (climb milling) would be quite jerky due to the direction of rotation of the router bit. A router speed control or a Variac unit can be used to control router RPM to suit the need. The cut can also be made in incremental depths till you get near the line, then finish up with a full depth pass or two. The accuracy of this particular hole is not really that critical, as it just has to let the cylinder sleeves enter the casing. An occasional testing of size with a spare sleeve was used for sizing, and a full bank of cylinders was used for the scribing, to keep the relationship between holes correct. It took a while, but at the time, I had no mill.

RJ

Do a deja and you'll find most of the metal group posts think you'll take a hand off. The wood groups have a couple of warnings, but mostly descriptions of how they successfully use routers and other wood tools for aluminum work.

Hmm.

Joel. phx

relationship