tap & die question

And some others are surprisingly soft too. For the softer ones, thread forming taps are a good bet. They simply displace material instead of cutting it.

The first time I saw one I thought it was a defect tap that had missed the machine that ground the flutes. They work real good on the gummy alloys in some aluminum castings. Also in some plastics like Lexan.

Reply to
Jack Erbes
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I beg your pardon! Maybe not today's tap sets, but I have a set (obtained from an eBay auction), made by TRW, which has all three in all the sizes from 1-64 through 1"-16 (IIRC) -- and good quality HSS taps at that (and dies). (Actually -- there is a place-holder where one uncommon size would go -- 5-40 I think.

These are the ones which push the chips ahead -- though not the spiral-point "gun" taps, which I admit I would prefer for most work.

I keep a 10x Jeweler's loupe and a good high-intensity light handy for those times. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

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Hmm ... we seem to have jumped from dealing with broken off taps to broken off screws here. :-)

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Hmm ... this suggests that you don't have an Albrecht style drill chuck on your drill press -- or you keep a keyed one ready to swap in when you need to drill in reverse. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

I have 3 drill presses, and two (3 actually, but one is for sale) vertical mills. The drill press in question is a South Bend, with a keyed chuck on a #2 morse taper

Gunner

Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.

Reply to
Gunner

Sometimes a blade or a phillips is a bit shinny for a tight fit. Also, most of us don't know how to sharpen (yep the pro's do) screwdrivers and define the blade for a screw slot.

Some of the nicest I've seen lately were from Sears - they are harder steel now and are ribbed on the blade. These help in a jam fit.

The grit in the bottle - helps cut into the driver and screw for a better and firm grip. I've seen some at Sears before.

Leevalley is just fine.

Martin

Reply to
Eastburn

Assuming most of your tapping is going to be on the small side ( 1/2 " or less ) nobody sharppens these taps. The big consideration is trying to remove fairly inexpensive broken tap from a very small hole in a fairly valuable gun. Some of these small taps require a bit of practice to be used on tough steel even with HSS. With poor quality taps small holes such as mounting a scope base could well be imposible on tough steel.

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Reply to
herb

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