On 5/10/2011 5:23 PM, Bob La Londe wrote:
My new elcheapo tapping head arrived yesterday. As is often the case
with Chinese tools the instructions appeared to be written by somebody
who was afraid to use much paper and suffered from learning English
recently as a second language from somebody who spoke English as a
second language.

However, I muddled through and determined that the "torque" settings
they referred to function as a friction slip clutch much like the drag
on a fishing reel. My new spiral flute taps to go with it have not
arrived yet, but I experimented anyway. Some MDF seemed like a suitable
test subject since all I have laying around are hand taps. It worked
pretty good. I set it for light torque, and just lifted the head to
reverse and clear chips when it slipped. It worked. Well, it worked
after I tightened up the collet closer, and it quit spinning around the
tap. LOL.

After doing 8 holes or so in the sample piece of MDF I got ballsy. I
broke out a scrap piece of aluminum and drilled some holes. Stop that! I
can see you cringing. I left the torque setting moderately light and
tapped the aluminum the same way I tapped the MDF. When the chips packed
up it would slip the clutch. I just lifted the head to reverse and blew
the chips out.

No its not the ideal way to tap a work piece, but it allowed me to play
with my new toy, and its still a lot faster than hand tapping. (lots of
mineral oil on the aluminum)

Its a lot better than I expected at a cost of only a yard and a half
brand new including freight.


Oh, Wow! I checked tracking on one of my packs of spiral flute taps a
few minutes ago, and it showed it had just been delivered. I unlocked
the drop box and rushed back to tap some real holes in a real work
piece. Oh, Wow! Zip! Zip! Zip! Zip!

I did notice one thing though that kind of concerns me. I got some
chips, but mostly I got some long fine wire like chips off of each of
the three flutes. On the first two holes I stopped the drill press to
clean them off, but after the third one I just tapped the next hole
without cleaning the long wires off. It tapped just fine, but I wonder
if those could cause some problems if I tried to tap say 10 or 20 or 50
holes without stopping to clean those off the tap.

The holes look beautiful by the way, but I did prep them just like as if
I was going to hand tap them with a slight chamfer by hand and a shot of
oil.

I've got new tool glow. It really works. Now to make myself some of
those fixture plates that I refused to buy before. LOL.