Drilling centre of rod

Well, Nick, if'n I was just down the road a piece from ya, I would be more than willing to chuck it up in the lathe - center drill and turn it to whatever your little heart desires - however, being on the other side of the big pond, I can only suggest you find someone local that could do it for you... Would save you lots of time and frustration. Clamping round stock "on end" on a drill press table can prove to be a "hair-pulling" experience, but you need to first get the table perfectly square with the axis of the bit. Clamping could be done with a couple of bars with a "V" notched in them, clamped to the round stock, then clamped to the table. Can't really help you much more than that. I think you can find the center and get it marked okay on your own, but there are probably lots of ways to jig it up on the drill press table. Ken.

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:25:06 -0700, " Jim Sehr" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

hmmm. Does the 3-jaw allow stock to pass right through? I was looking at actually making up a fitting allowed me to put the 3 jaw in the morse taper of the drill, then hold the stock in that. But any out of true in the stock of course mucks this up. Your way, I could set up a system that allows the stock to pass right through and be drilling with the work held near the tip of the drill....if the chuck allows stock to pass through. As you say, set up a jig once, take the time to do it, and I have it for all time.

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 01:41:21 GMT, Ken vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

I was lookimg at being independent.

(1) There _is_ nobody local to me! (2) I am doing this from time to time, one way or another, and it's usually "Wup! I need a centre hole!". You get to use up your credit after a while.

........I am starting to feel a lathe coming on..

...funny...every time I talk about 'feeling something coming on" I need to talk to the wife!

I am interested in the 3-jaw chuck idea. Once set up, it's there.

A V block fixture plate is your best bet. Make them or buy a V block-- the "bigger" the better. Imports from Enco et all are cheap.

If you want to drill 6" lenghts, the V blocks should be at LEAST 2-3". 3" is good.

Two is better-- one will suffice. Screw one of the V Blocks to a flat plate of steel or aluminum with the V vertical -- 6" x 6" by 1/2" thick will work. Make sure after you screw on one of the V blocks that the V block is truely square in the vertical direction.

Net, you have a flat horizontal plate with one V block screwed to it from the bottom. Insert the rod into the V of the first V block and use the second V block as a second "jaw". Camp it around the rod with a C clamp or a bar clamp. Now your rod is fixed and will not move in the V blocks.

Next you can clamp the horizontal plate to the drill press table after moving it around to center the rod under the drill bit.

Finding the center is easy with a center finder, then use a wiggler to locate the center punch mark under the drill press spindle. Once the wiggler is running directly over the center punch mark, clamp the horizontal plate down and start drilling.

If drilling more than one rod, simply unclamp the second V block, put in a new rod (same size), reclamp the second V block and drill away. The horizontal plate with the first V block screwed to it sets location under the drill press.

Make sure your drill press spindle and table are truly at 90 degrees.

Easy to do and works quite well.

The first part is easy. Flip the table 90°. Clamp a sacrificial piece of wood, aluminum or steel to the table. Drill a 1" hole. Secure your

Ron Thompson Was On the Beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast, Now On the Beautiful Florida Space Coast, right beside the Kennedy Space Center, USA

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

--Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 03:02:35 GMT, "Steve Koschmann" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

OK. Read and understood. Thanks. It was not long ago that I found that a wiggler was NOT a rude word!

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 22:42:38 -0500, Ron Thompson vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

OK. Yep. That might do it. "Carpenter" here.... I have some nice blocks of hard wood around. The elegance here is that the hole is dead centre and also dead in line, without having to align anything.

Funny. I needed to drill a piece of wood the other day, and used the same principle. But I had not thought of "turning the tables" on that damn drill! <

mmmmmm.. How do you secure the rod? Ok! Thought of a couple of ideas.

Also a tightwad. Pity about the sacrificial bit...I was looking for a jig sort of way.

But if I jigged up systems that allowed me to locate pieces with various hole sizes, then depended on the table.

My memory is not getting any better as I age but I think Ted Edwards posted about removing the table entirely and putting a collet the right size in its place . Luck , best is use this job to get your lathe . Ken Cutt

'Wiggler' is also the name for a JTAG interface made by Macraigor Systems for debugging microcontroller systems. It wiggles the pins on the PC printer port, hence the name.

Leon

Now that's clever. I woulda never thought outside the box like this. Doesn't even have to be exactly 90, either.

Every little bit helps, someday I might need that. Thanks.

Nick, Nick! How can you fail to recognise this as the opportunity to get that lathe you've wanted for years! :-)

Here's how I solved that frequently arising problem: <

Of course, you need the lathe to make the adapter. :-)

Ted

A three jaw chuck will allow stock to pass through it. 5C collets will also allow that. So if you ran across a three jaw chuck at a reasonable price, you could bolt it to a piece of flat stock and then use C clamps to secure it to the drill press table. If you put a short piece of round stock in the three jaw chuck and the drill press chuck before clamping the chuck to the drill press table, you would have the three jaw chuck aligned with the drill press. And could remove the round stock from the three jaw chuck and insert whatever you want to drill.

You could do the same thing with a Spin index ( or other collet holder ) and 5C collets. Using 5 C collets you would be limited to 1.125 inch stock. A small three jaw chuck would allow bigger round stock.

Dan

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 09:33:47 -0300, "jtaylor" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

I am glad someone sle saw the flexibility of this, and was honest enough....

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 01:35:43 -0700, Ken Cutt vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Selective deafness applies......

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 01:27:10 GMT, Old Nick vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Everybody keeps telling me about how a lathe would do the job......

You guys! Tempters all of you! The Wife's gunna hate y'all

Yea, just remember that a long rod might need to go through the headstock. So if the diameter of the rod won't go through the headstock you will still find yourself looking for other ways to center drill the end.

I use to run into this problem when I owned an atlas lathe with a 3/4 hole in the headstock. I found myself using a steady rest 1 or 2 feet from the chuck to center drill the end before I could turn between centers. I never was very successful in getting it right on. This technique doesn't work too well with square stock unless you have something to clamp on the square stock to make it round where near the steady rest.

I really like the V blocks and the chuck on the table of the drill press for some of these unusual circumstances! I wish I knew about them then so I could have tried them out!

chuck

Yeah, that 3/4" hole does provide some limitations... I, too, have the Craftsman 12x36 with 3/4" headstock through hole - lotsa times wished it was even just a "little bit" bigger Ken.

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 15:51:53 GMT, Ted Edwards vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!: remove ns from my header address to reply via email

What you have done is very much what I had in mind, except I was looking at having the chuck on a morse taper in the press, rotating. Your way would work as well, and maybe better (?).

It was going to cost over $200 just to get the chuck _mounted_ on a morse tapered face plate, as you have made without the taper. The chuck was going to be around $100 and the morse taper and faceplate $100-ish.

The subject of the lathe has been broached ad is being rumhbled around the floor for a few days!