how to use a tapping head

The ones I have seen reverse direction when the axial pressure on the top changes direction from downfeed to upwards, so that you can forward and reverse by pulling up or down on the drill press quill feed handle... --Glenn Lyford

Without being familiar with that particular tapping head, I'm not sure there are any direct answers. Some tapping heads rely on the operator to not break taps, others have adjustments that limit driving force. As has already been suggested, when tapping, all you have to do is lift up on the quill feed handle and the tapping head reverses, usually at a greater speed than the tapping speed, so you can get out of a hole very quickly. Best way to learn how to use yours if you have no literature on which to call for information is to get your hands dirty on a practice piece that has little to no value to you. You'll probably find you can still break taps, it just makes it faster to do so.

Make sure you use taps intended to be power driven. The typical hand tap will usually lead to nothing but broken taps because they rely on reversal constantly to break the chips. Nothing taps quite as well as a gun tap, even in blind holes. Just make sure you have enough depth of hole to accommodate the chip, which can usually be removed after tapping by using a needle in an air hose nozzle. I keep several sizes of them in my toolbox for just such an occasion. It's also a good idea to use only sharp taps. Once they are dull, they usually lead to trouble, and are difficult to re-sharpen with good results. Most attempts generally fail miserably.

Harold

Oh, you want advice AND to gloat in the same thread? Puh-leeze.

I have a Procunier "CNC" tapping head. The difference is this one has no overload clutch, and depends on the CNC to control plunge depth.

I do a LOT of blind holes, and the spiral FLUTE taps are incredible! These bring the chip up the flutes and out the hole.

There are also thread forming taps, that make no chip. You need to start with a larger hole, and these are for softer materials only.

It is just WILD to tap a bunch of holes at 300 -600 RPM, just zoom in, zoom out, and on to the next hole.

Jon

My first choice in tapping heads is the Procunier, too. Great devices regardless of the machine on which they are used. To my knowledge, none of their tapping heads have torque limiting devices. Get ham handed and you're likely to bust taps. They're certainly capable, although they have a very nice feel if your quill isn't tight. I've had outstanding luck with them. I've used spiral fluted taps, but I still prefer the gun tap for general use, especially when tapping tougher material. I've had a few failures with them, unlike the gun types.

Harold

You probably know this, but Ettco is still in business,

You might contact them. They sent me a parts diagram for my 1930's model

-- Greg

All the tap heads I have rebuilt by Procunier and Ettco use a cork lined double cone clutch and a set of planetary gears inside. The tap is driven into the work by one side of the cone clutch until the body of the tapper is stopped by a physical limiter on the drill press or other machine. The tap loses driving friction at this point by the cone clutch disengaging, and goes into a "neutral", which limits tapping depth. You can pause tapping at this point if you desire, by keeping the head floating in this neutral zone, with your feed handle. Whenever downward pressure is released, the other face of the cone clutch, along with the planetary gears come into play, reversing the taps rotation to back out of the hole. The gearing speeds up this process of getting out of the hole more quickly. Once the tap clears the work, it automatically switches directions via a coil spring against the cone clutch to once again drive in a right hand direction. The screws you see around the lower end of the tapping head are the spindles of the planetary gears. Take the top off. It won't explode. Parts are not cheap. I just spent over $400 converting a Procunier from Morse taper mounting over for use on a Burgmaster 2BH with a threaded spindle.

RJ

And store them in an upright position to keep oil from getting on the clutch.

michael

I checked a Procunier tapping head today, and found that it backs the tap out of the work at 2X the speed that it feeds into the work, for those interested.

RJ

Greg, Backlash, others: Thanks for the wealth of info - now I know a bit on how to use it and how it works. I hope to be able to play with it this week end. Since this is a small unit, the tap head chuck only opens up to 0.25 inch, I need to rumage thru my misc tap bucket for a spare or two that I don't mind sacrificing - it seems that I have many more duplicate taps that are greater than 0.25 than smaller.

And no, I will admit that I did not even think of looking to see if ETTCO was still in business, I just assumed that most companies have either gone under or have been consolodated / renamed in the past 80 years. In looking in a couple of catalogs to see if I could visually identify "gun" taps, I came across current ETTCO tapping heads.