On 22 Feb 2006 03:54:11 -0800, "Eric Anderson"
wrote:
In answer to what we are drilling: This is a snowplow belly blade. A
grader blade under a 25,000 lb snowplow vehicle. We are attaching
sensors that detect when the plow blade is down. It is being used in
an AVL system. This stands for automatic vehicle location system. A
fancy word for a way to track snowplow vehicles so dispatchers know
what areas have been plowed and what areas have not.
The blade tip is carbide, but the main blade area that supports the tip
is just mild steel. We welded the sensor bracket on last time, but
that was time consuming, required removeal of vehicle power and used a
valuable welding resource that was not always available. We can use
the same installers that are installing the rest of the electronics if
we use threaded fasteners. The blade thickness in the area we are
working is about 1 inch thick. We want to drill a 3/4 inch deep hole
with a #1 drill which is the size called for for the thread rolling
fastener we are intending to use. The quarters are cramped and we
intend to use ramps to lift the front of the vehicle.
I have talked to a company here in Michigan that sells mag drills
(after you guys suggested it), but so far the chuck in the one I found
takes a minimum drill size of 7/16, I believe. I was sort of surprised
at this, but that was my 1st attempt.
Some of the other ideas you-all suggested, such as a lever, would be a
good idea if there was a consistant area to hook one end of the lever.
Anyway, I hope that explains some things and maybe primes you to come
up with even more ideas to consider.
Well besides the mag drill you can also make a dead man that you can
clamp to the blade. Put a screw in it to feed the drill into the work.
Another method would be to get one of those drill press stands for
portable drills and clamp it to the blade. You might get some ideas
from my web site. Here's a pic of me using my air drill with a dead
man.
http://www.metalworking.com/DropBox/...xtension07.jpg
In this case the jack screw is in the drill but it's possible to do
it the other way around.