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Metalworking (rec.crafts.metalworking) Discuss various aspects of working with metal, such as machining, welding, metal joining, screwing, casting, hardening/tempering, blacksmithing/forging, spinning and hammer work, sheet metal work. |
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Making holes in aluminum sheetmetal
This will probably be boringly obvious to most readers, but I'll post
it in the hope that it might be useful to a few because it worked so well for me. I wanted to cut some .700 dia holes in .062 aluminum. After trying some other approaches I tried making a shop- expedient trepanning tool. I turned a bit of 3/4" barstock down to .700" OD, drilled it out 5/8" and milled slots in the result. No rotary table, just V-blocks in the vise and X-Y movements. Each slot was made so the cutting edge thus formed was square, OD of 1/4" endmill moving radially from the center of the workpiece. I then hand-ground a bit of relief, rake and bevel (so it penetrates OD before ID) with a Dremel running an abrasive cutoff disc. Material was 12Lsomething free-machining steel. I love that stuff! I case-hardened it with Kasenite which seems to work OK on 12Lxx, A sharp new file skates on the hardened part. This precision process consists of heating with an O/A torch until orange, plunging into the can of Kasenite, heating again to a glowing glob of orange for a couple of minutes with the garage door open so the smoke had somewhere to go, and then plunging into a margarine tub of water. After quenching, I poured a wee dram of Menard's finest muriatic acid ($1.98 a gallon on sale) into the margarine tub to pickle off the oxides for a few minutes. I don't think I spend an hour making this tool. This quick-a-minnit tool works far better than any holesaw I've ever used. It goes thru 1/16" al in a few seconds at 135 RPM with only mild pull on the quill and a drop of cutting fluid on the workpiece, cutting a nice curly chip and leaving a clean and nearly burr-free hole. I made a slot for poking the slugs out of the center, but wouldn't have had to. They about fall out when picked with a scribe. Photo sent to the dropbox as "holecutter". |
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