Casting a tapping guide arm for my drill press

Home Model Engine Machinist Forum

Help Support Home Model Engine Machinist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
That's a great job Al! Awesome work mate! The info on casting is very helpful too.

cheers, Ian
 
Beagles: Thanks for your great comment. I hope I am contributing to the forum after all the wonderful projects I have viewed and learned from on this site.

Ian: Thanks, I'll have to post some other casting projects I have done.
 
To continue on. I drilled a cross hole for a removable T handle and to attach upper piece to allow installation and removal. A bolt is shown here, but it will be pinned.

IMG_1782Copy.jpg


The T handle is removable by screwing off one of the knobs. The knobs scavenged from leftover hydraulic valve handles. There are 3 levels of driving the tapping shaft and torque control. The knurled disk for very small taps, the T handle for larger taps, and the nubbin on top to allow a reversible hand drill for powered tapping when there are several holes or I'm just plain lazy. :)

IMG_1780Copy.jpg


Here is the hand drill attached. The drill is reversible and has a torque limiting clutch on it. The weight of it overcomes my friction detent and pushes the shaft down to full extension. The drill press also works as a handy anti-rotation device when operating the drill.

IMG_1785Copy.jpg


To counterbalance the weight of the drill, I rounded up a spring and soldered machine washers on both ends to act as thrust bearings when pushing the drill down. This is also removable for hand tapping.

IMG_1810Copy.jpg


IMG_1811Copy.jpg


IMG_1817Copy.jpg


The finial modification (at least for now) was to find a solution to slippage of the tap drill chuck on larger taps 1/4" and above due to my cheap drill chuck, the hardness of the tap shaft, and the torque required. The maximum tap size is 1/2". I recalled Irwin made tap chuck to fit on a 3/8" socket drive to work with hand drills. I bought one and tried it, but found the connection to the socket adapter was too sloppy and would pull off the adapter when reversing. I made my own drive adapter and soldered it to the chuck.

IMG_1812Copy.jpg


IMG_1813Copy.jpg


IMG_1814Copy.jpg


This works just fine, but I'm uncertain how many holes I will need to tap above ¼". At least I'm prepared.

IMG_1816Copy.jpg


Well, I think that's it for now till I think of some other modification!;) Attached below is a video of this gizmo in action tapping two ¼" holes in a piece of 1/8" plate (looks like Swiss cheese with all the test holes). One manual then switched over to power taping for the other.

[ame]http://youtu.be/ahTrbHEXu3g[/ame]

This was a fun little project that evolved along the way. I hope I will find it useful going forward and I hope I didn't over load the forum with pictures. Thanks for your interest and comments.

Al
 
Nice work! You aren't going to stop now are you, where is the staking tool? Just kidding, you have a nice solution to solve a couple of common problems.
 
set up to cut the taper on the shaft by chucking the morse taper drill chuck adapter I knocked out of the drill chuck I was going to use and put it in a R8 to morse adapter so I could get a round surface to mount in the lathe chuck. Whew, a lot of chucking going on in this sentence. Then I used a parallel to set the compound angle

like the way you got this done:idea:

nice workThm:
 
Very nice! I am excited to see it in action :)
 
Wizard69: Thanks - Hey that is a good idea. Made me think of other uses, like a hand reaming guide,staking as you suggested, or low speed sensitive drilling.

Luc: It maybe the only time I'll have a use for the R8 to morse taper adapter that came with my mill!

Brian: Thanks - Did you watch the video? It show me drilling and taping a couple of holes.
 
Brian: Thanks - Did you watch the video? It show me drilling and taping a couple of holes.

Oops, I missed the video link yesterday. Very handy attachment :)

Do you have any issues with the drill chuck slipping on the tap?
 
Wizard69: Thanks - Hey that is a good idea. Made me think of other uses, like a hand reaming guide,staking as you suggested, or low speed sensitive drilling.
This project of yours will motivate me to finish up one or two I have hanging in the cellar. Not metal casting projects by the way but shop improvements none the less.

I actually just took apart an old battery powered drill that I've had laying around since the NiCads died. I'm thinking the little 12VDC motor aught to make a nice driver for very small drill bits without all the gearing.
Luc: It maybe the only time I'll have a use for the R8 to morse taper adapter that came with my mill!

Brian: Thanks - Did you watch the video? It show me drilling and taping a couple of holes.

In any event keep up the good work. Like many I find this little project of yours to be good inspiration.
 
MachineTom: Thanks for the comment. No my drill press will not be used for the tapping. It is only donating it's table, column, and light. The tapping is manual or if my idea works out will use a reversible hand drill which is variable speed.

gus: I am using melted down hydraulic pump cast aluminum housings. What is "de-fetter"?

metalmad: Thanks, Yes I've made several pours and many mistakes, but I learn something each time. Here is a few still shots and video of my bench. It's great to have the mess contained in one area. :)

IMG_1305Upload.jpg


IMG_1307Upload.jpg


http://youtu.be/GbYw5P0V6As

Hi AL

Used wrong word. I mean -------how did you remove the odds/ends sticking out at the parting line? There is a foundry term for this treatment.Got mixed up with-------"fettling"
 
Dave: Thanks, I have seen Robs work on Madmodder, very impressive. I haven't seen his tap guide though. I got my inspiration from myfordboy on Youtube, though I'm doing my tap guide very different. Bushing the hole in the table or taking the table off and using the hole in the table arm seems like a lot of work every time you want to tap something. With a separate arm you can drill your holes and then rotate the table over and tap them out. I hope to have powered tapping with a hand drill. Stay tuned, hopefully it will work.

Now I see how the both work with each other, thanks for that and all the pictures of the process. It has turned out nice and will be a really handy accessory. I too have also learned a lot about casting from this thread and hope to have mine up and running soon.

I have been chasing the 2 piece Irwin tap set on and off over the past few years but no one in the US seems to want to post them to Australia, and if they do they want some stupid price like $70 plus post when other sellers have them for as low as $20.

I chased up Rob one, maybe he got inspiration from the same source
http://madmodder.net/index.php/topic,3973.msg43134.html#msg43134

Dave
 
gus: I think I understand what your asking. I think you mean the sprue and risers plus the flash at the parting line. As you can see from the photo below, I had very little flash and the gates were kind of thin:

IMG_1735Copy.jpg


This being an aluminum casting, I just use my 4X6 metal band saw in the vertical position to cut of the sprue and any large flash along the parting line. I have built a larger, heavy duty, permanently attached table on my little saw that makes this easy to do. I then finish up any left over with a burr on my Dremel tool and finally hand files to smooth things out.

You can see the table in this picture:

IMG_1746Copy.jpg


The result of all that fettling (you were using the correct term, I just hadn't heard it before here in the back woods of Idaho :):

IMG_1742Copy.jpg
 
Davo J:

Now I see how the both work with each other, thanks for that and all the pictures of the process. It has turned out nice and will be a really handy accessory. I too have also learned a lot about casting from this thread and hope to have mine up and running soon.

That's how I learned what I know about foundry work by following other threads and sites on casting, especially from this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/user/myfordboy

Have you tried Amazon for thr Irwin tap adapters. They have a desent price, though I don't know if they are available or pricing where you are:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TGM7HY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I chased up Rob one, maybe he got inspiration from the same source
http://madmodder.net/index.php/topic,3973.msg43134.html#msg43134

I hadn't seen that, but it is remarkable how similar the design is! I guess there just so may was to make an arm for a drill press! :D I guess great minds think alike. :rolleyes: I'm glad I split mine, much easier to install. Rob does fantastic work though.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Latest posts

Back
Top