"Stupendous Man" wrote in message
...


It says right on the label, "Use the clutch only as a safety device,
not as stop in bottom holes."

But when the hole is too short to use the tool normally, what can you do?
The clutch on the cordless drill worked just fine, didn't break a single
tap, although my wrists were a little sore the next day.

Counting the paint marks on the chuck was easy. Black or white marks were
hard to see, but a 1/2 inch wide red stripe showed up fine.

One of the drawbacks of operating a small, one-man shop is that the budget
is tight. Another is that I am over 100 miles from the nearest industrial
metal supplier, and 150 from any decent tool suppliers. I often machine at
slower than necessary speeds to conserve the tooling. I also save every
tiny piece of scrap as i may need it later. I have been know to make
fixtures out of Bondo and scrap lumber.
http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...e/IMG_2367.jpg
Part runs are usually pretty short. The boss will send me a design or part
to be modified, and first i have to figure out how to do it. Then, I
figure out how to do it with the materials present. Then, I figure out how
to do it with the existing tooling. Sometimes the part gets re-designed
three times before I make the first cut.


I'm in the same boat.
Luckily, there are about 5 or 6 different Tap-Matics that came with the
business when we bought it... I wouldn't have been able to go out and buy
them new. I use the 50X almost every day... but the holes all go through.
I have two 50X's, a Model "A" that others have mentioned, a huge R7, and
a little "1A"... and they all work differently (designed for different
applications, I think). If I remember right, the R7 goes in and out at the
same speed... for old NC machines that had a set feed rate? The 50X has the
adjustable "safety" clutch and reverses at something like 1.5X the feed-in
speed, while the Model A and little 1A have the adjustable auto-feed depth
for blind holes.
I don't know if you could build a fixture for you part, where the part
would be clamped up under a spacer plate with a tapped hole in it... so that
you could get 3/8" or 1/2" of "feed" to start the Tap-Matic (tap through the
plate and into your part)? Then you could set the depth to 3/8" less than
the thickness of the plate + your hole depth, so the Tap-Matic would kick
out normally?