How do you drill through stainless steel at home?

Much like the heat shrink tubing someone with the initials C.Y. mentioned?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

BTW, the chinese-finger-trap seems the most clever!

Apparently you immediately concluded I was making a reference to you. Why did you think that?

Wasn't than an old native american torture?

He can. And then it re-appears in a second, if he doesn't feed with sufficient pressure ('way more than he may be used to with common grades of steel).

It may be that his only problem is with the initial state of the stainless, in which case annealing can solve the problem, if the stainless was left in the as-rolled state to begin with. More likely, though, he's starting too slow, with insufficient feed pressure, and work-hardening it himself. That's so common for people who aren't used to machining stainless that I thought it was most likely.

Pointless and stupid is all you understand.

Speaking of stupid.... It was pretty stupid for you to pretend you choose not to fix a car or drill stainless for any reason other than you simply have no idea how to do those things.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I will try a job once to learn how before I send it out. Then I can understand the fab shop when they suggest changes to ease production. That mattered when we were trying to push the state of the art in aircraft digital radios while staying with commercial process limitations.

Too often electronic designers know nothing of creating the package their brainchild must live in. Several times I've entered a project as the lowly lab tech and bootstrapped myself up to systems integrator after showing the engineers I could handle every aspect beyond their initial schematic design, freeing them from its drudgery. Proof-of-concept models I machined at home helped enormously.

Then I have to switch from building to buying as much as possible because I'm swamped with designing and assembling all the circuit boards and coordinating the interfaces between each engineer's part of the circuit.

The difference as a hobbyist is that I allocate more time and less money so the balance shifts toward building. Plus each task I can learn to do on the car brings me closer to truly owning it, instead of it (and the dealer) owning me. My shop may have paid for itself by making special tools from scrap to let me do dealer jobs like $600 timing belt replacements. jsw

He did assume that titanium coating implied quality.

Maybe mapp gas with oxygen might be hot enough to punch a hole in stainless steel.

It takes a certain level of ignorance to believe that it is possible to be "able" without ever actually "doing".

Yup.

Ordinary thin wall heat shrink isn't really strong enough. What he needs is the really thick stuff used for insulating electrical connections and that has sticky goo on the inside, much like what someone with initials J.L. mentioned.

However, if that's too much trouble, just use a hose clamp instead. Form follows function.

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I'll see your nylon and raise you a pliable vinyl end cap.

The difference between the men and the boys is the boys can maybe afford to run out and buy every shiny tool on the market, but the men can make their own tools.

Recently I had to drill through a short length of tool steel. Needless to say, titanium-nitride coated bits didn't even start the hole. I found some advice on a web-site which suggested using a torch to remove the temper in the area of the workpiece to be drilled, which was not an option in my case since the item I was working with was about 1" x 1/2" x 1/16". Plus I don't have a forge yet. Another suggestion was to use a wooden dowel and some grit, which is going to take a while.

I ended up hanging a jar of coins from the drill-press handle in conjunction with the dowel method. Periodically you have to replenish the grit under the dowel, but it went through in a few hours. Stainless steel is softer than tool steel, so a carbide tile bit might work instead.

Regards,

Uncle Steve

Little did he know how dangerous you would be in that field. ;-)

Here's a thought to keep in mind for the future. It's the way that gunsmiths annealed spots on (case hardened) '03 Springfield receivers, for drilling to mount a scope.

Cut the head off of a 12d nail, or use other appropriately sized pieces of mild steel bar. Chuck the nail or bar in your drill press and mount the work firmly in your vise.

Get the spindle turning at a medium speed, bring the nail down onto the work, and press down firmly. You want to make a spot glow at least dark cherry red from friction.

Take the nail out of the drill chuck and chuck your drill bit. Drill as deep as you need, or as deep as you can. If necessary, remove the bit, re-chuck the nail, and do the whole thing again. The annealing doesn't run very deep.

I've used this method to drill flat springs, and it worked great for me. It also leaves a minimum amount of distortion and a minimal heat-affected zone.

This is an important point!

First, I tried shoe goop + leather strips. Disaster. Luckily, the shoe goop cleaned off the stainless perfectly.

Then I tried rubber strips (made by cutting a 26" length of bicycle tube strips about 1/2" wide. Wouldn't stay on even though I used glue (it unwound while the glue was setting.

Then, in frustration, I simply used electrical tape and hanging wire! Butt ugly!

But, as Jeff said, form follows function ... And, as Oren is fond of saying, "looks fine from far away!".

Here's a picture of the abomination! (Drilling would have been prettier!).

Notice the Ballantine Church Key from the 60s' next to it. At least they had holes in the ends way back then.

I'll probably unwrap the electrical tape when I find something better - but - for now - it should work (but it's fuuuugly).

Works very well on case hardened items. It is one of the uses I have for cheap/broken drill bits.

I must be getting senile. i misunderstood.

Dan

Ever notice my domain name? The Cal Poly motto is "Learn by Doing" (Discere Faciendo). I didn't quite get the translation from Latin correct and ended up with "Learn By Destroying". It was appropriate Destruction and resurrection form a great learning experience. At the time, I think I held the record for maximum damage in a single semester. At graduation time, the faculty committee could not decide if they should require that I hang around another year as punishment for past indiscretions, or to summarily graduate me in order to get rid of me.

Working in electronics was somewhat less destructive mostly because I decided that actually thinking before I did something was a good idea.