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Milwaukee Steel Hawg Cutters Cross Compatibility

Gentlemen,

I have a couple of Milwaukee Steel Hawg magnetic drill presses. One is a model 4240 and the other, a 4245. Both use different "quick change" cutters which are not cross compatible. Apparently, some of the later model Milwaukee drills use a #3 morse taper arbor that can be made compatible with the 4245 (but not the 4240) cutters by means of an adapter. Therefore, the machines appear to be backwardly compatible with the older cutters but not forwardly compatible.

Anybody have any experience with these older machines? I would like to be able to use the later threaded type cutters with either or both of these cutters, if possible. It would also be good to be able to use the cutters in a drill press. I have two machines and at present, only one cutter for each machine. Therefore, for them to do me any good I'm gonna have to sink some money into cutters for one or the other. Since the cutters are expensive I can't afford to invest in cutters for both. And whichever one I go with I would like to be able to use the cutters on my Chinese drill press. If I'm not mistaken the Jacobs chuck on the drill press fits onto an arbor with a #3 morse taper. Speaking of Jacobs chucks and arbors it would be positively ducky if I could fit a chuck to either of the metal hawgs and use regular twist drills in it.

After doing a fair amount of googling my preliminary impression is "it ain't gonna happen" to use a jacobs chuck on either machine. However, it does appear that I might be able to buy cutters for the 4245 hawg and that there is an adapter (big $$$ however) that will enable the

4245 cutters to be usable with the LATER model hawgs that use a #3 morse taper arbor. What I'm wondering is whether that same arbor will work in my Chinese drill press? If there is a #3 morse taper out there is there one that's cheaper than the $400+ critter sold by Milwaukee? During my googling I saw a discussion among home-built dirt digger freaks who were discussing how they managed to drill big holes in thick steel for their projects. One guy said he bought a #3 arbor from a guy in England and that this enabled him to use the Milwaukee cutters. As is probably apparent by now I am not very knowledgeable about machine tools.

Hope this makes sense. Is anybody in here up to speed on all of this? I would like to be able to clearly understand what I can and cannot hope to accomplish with these machines.

Thanks and best holiday wishes.

Vernon

Reply to
Vernon
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Gunner. Verrry fine fishing, dude! However, although it sounds like your patch may make the newer threaded cutters work on the drill press using the doo-dads you found on ebay, I don't see how they're gonna work in the mag drills. I don't have a camera available right now or I'd take a pic of the cutters in the 4240 and the 4245. But both mag drills have a quick disconnect ring that releases the cutters. You pull the ring down and pull the cutter out. The ends of the 4245 cutters have raised studs that register in holes up inside the drill. The 4240 uses a different system. I have not found any good pictures of the 4240 cutters on the internet (including ebay) but there are still a lot of cutters out there that fit the 4245. You can find pictures of these that show the studs on the end of the cutter. As I recall, the guy in the dirt digger group did not mention which version of the cutters he was using. But he did say that he paid $55 for the MT#3 adapter that he bought in England. Maybe I can find that site again and point you to it.

Happy new year!

V
Reply to
Vernon

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*Which* Chinese drill press? Mine (actually from Taiwan back around the late 1970s) uses a MT-2 arbor. (I would like it to use a MT-3, simply so I could swap things directly between it and my lathe tailstock, but the quill in the drill press is not large enough to handle a MT-3 socket. This is one of the floor-standing ones with the 16-speed belt setup. Yes, there are larger drill presses (from China and elsewhere) which have MT-3 sockets -- or even larger, but not this one.

And I have my doubts that the entire setup from spindle up through head, down through column and out to table is rigid enough to use an annular cutter without a pilot anyway.

But -- you *could* get a MT-2 blank (if MT-2 is what fits your drill press) and pop it into the lathe spindle (with whatever reducing collar is necessary) and turn the other end to the proper dimensions to accept the cutters. Those blank arbors are fairly inexpensive, and would let you test whether your drill press is rigid enough for the task.

Since I don't have one of the Milwaukee mag base drills, I don't know what the mounting is for the cutters -- but if you have a lathe and a mill, it is likely that you can make the necessary modifications to the mild steel end of the blank MT-2 (or MT-3) arbor.

I've used these to make adaptors for two different sized TapMatic tapping heads -- both of which have threaded holes for the arbors instead of the more common Jacobs taper.

I suspect that the combined length of a chuck plus even a screw-machine length drill bit would be too great to work with most mag drills -- which are short to maximize rigidity -- one of the reasons that a typical drill press is probably not rigid enough.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

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Hmm ... strange feature there. I suspect that it is a bearing which is mounted to the mag drill body by the L-shaped part to hold the arbor to the socket.

Depends on where you find it. I think that it is the thread onto which the cutter screws, not the thread for a drawbar.

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Hmm ... 18mm is 0.7087", and calculating from the gauge line diameter, shank length, and taper of a MT-3, the small end is 0.7432 resulting in a wall thickness of only 0.0173" -- not enough to give any strength to a drawbar, so it is almost certainly the thread that the cutter screws onto.

So -- does he have a lathe which will accept (either directly or with reducing collars) a MT-3 arbor, and which can cut metric threads. (That 1.5mm thread pitch works out close to 17 TPI (16.9333 TPI) which does not sound like a standard thread pitch.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

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Dream2000 wrote: To the original question: 4240 / 4245 Steel Hawgs

I have a 4240,which 'looks' like the 4245. The 4240 uses different cutters from all other Milwaukee mag drills. Both release the cutter by pulling down a ring on the spindle. The difference is how the cutter is driven. The 4240 cutters have an internal keyway and the 4245 has 2 tangs. Both are retained by the groove on the OD of the shank. It would be impossible to modify either machines to use a chuck or any adapter. The reason is that both the 4240 & 4245 only have 1" of travel beyond the length of these squatty cutters. The cutter for both are only available in

1" depth, while the other kinds are 1" or 2" depth. To my knowledge, the 4240 cutters are 'discontinued', although some places still have some. The 4245's may be discontinued too, but are the 'newer' type of the two kinds. If you were to try to accumulate cutters, I'd suggest pursuing the 4245 type.

As to the 49-57-0010,49-57-0012, or the chip-breaker 49-57-0013 adapters...the 3 range from ~ $100 to almost ~ $500 for the chip-breaker version.

These use the thread internal cutters, which are widely available (but still not cheap).

The last type of annular cutter is the 3/4" Weldon shank type, used by Jancy,Dewalt,Milwaukee and others. They are Hi-Speed not carbide.

Reply to
Dream2000

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Dream2000 wrote: I have a 4240. The cutters for the 4240 are discontinued. There are some places that still have them though. I'd recommend chasing the ones for the 4245, the tang-drive type.

As to modifying either machine...forget it. Both only have 1" of travel beyond cutter length.

As to running some kind of adapter in a drill press (especially one from China,etc) would be a great way to ruin the drill press spindle. These cutters are sorta like a hollow end-mill,and they want to 'walk'. Running them in a mill would be OK, but not a drill-press.

The factory (expensive) adapters incorporate a spring-loaded center pin affair, that centers the cutter and ejects the resulting slug. I suppose if you were real careful and on smaller sizes, you may be able to do it?...I would not try it.

Another option would be to sell both of those and buy a Milwaukee 4270-20 Compact Mag base. They use 3/4" Weldon shank annular cutters (hi-speed not carbide) and are among the cheapest and most available. The Compact can also use a 1/2" Jacobs drill for jobber-lenght drill bits.

Reply to
Dream2000

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