On 2011-05-11, Bob La Londe wrote:
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

[ ... ]

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.

Probably not a problem until they threaten to tangle up with
something stationary.

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.

The next step -- for holes which you expect to do a lot of -- is
to get the combination drill and spiral flute tap, so you can do it all
in a single pass. (Well ... no chamfer ... but. :-) I think that there
is even a spring-loaded tool designed to go on a drill bit which rides
in the flutes and chamfers the hole at the end of travel. Maybe one of
these would chamfer your tapped hole for you with everything else.

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.

That's what the new tool glow will do to you. ;-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

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