Holes with 'Iffy' eyes??

[Little_Freddie]

Hiya All, newbie on here, but at almost 60, the old peepers aint too hot,....good optics help, but I do find I have trouble selecting drills/reamers/taps, especially under 10mm... I have a little dodge I use on the above, as reading the etch gives me a lot of trouble.

I am also a Radio Ham, and an aeromodeller, so I know the resistor colour (color? ;D) code, and have lots of pots (tins?) of enamel paint. So, I band the chuck end of my drills/taps/reamers with the corresponding paints, i.e. 3.2mm reamer is banded orange/red,...... 5mm green..... 8.5mm.. grey/green..... for metric (which is my main mode....) I find this saves me hours of struggling with the printing,.... cant think how you would apply this to imperial,.. but they made me have a Euro passport, so I thought I would go the whole hog!!! :big: :big:

Hope this helps anyone,.... ( it will certainly ensure you get the right size drill, if you borrow one off me!! ;D )

Cheers, Fred

 

[vlmarshall]

EXCELLENT idea! :bow: :bow: Welcome to the forum.

I don't know how you'd apply it to imperial, either... perhaps the number of 64ths, or similar...

 

[mklotz]

I've been using the same procedure for years to "label" my checkering files.

For fractional designations, perhaps you could use one of the tolerance codes* as a separator between numerator and denominator. For example 17/64 might be labeled

brown violet -silver- blue yellow

or, for decimal values use it as the decimal point.

1.25 = brown -gold- red green

--
*After the three color bands denoting resistor value, there is a space for a fourth band denoting the tolerance of the resistor. IIRC, the code is:

none - 20%
silver - 10%
gold - 5%

 

[Twmaster]

Wow. Excellent idea! {Mike pushes the applaud button}

 

[wm460]

Great idea Fred, will keep that in mind.

 

[mklotz]

You can extend this idea and use it to mark stock in your shop.

The color codes used by metal distributors are, like nearly everything else in this standard-phobic country (USA), not standardized and so do not provide a reliable means of identifying stock.

Make up your own code. Assign a number between zero and 999 to each of the types of stock you use - a thousand possible codes should be enough for even the most professional shop. Buy paint marker pens in the ten colors of the code...

0 - black
1 - brown
2 - red
3 - orange
4 - yellow
5 - green
6 - blue
7 - violet
8 - grey
9 - white

Then, three swipes with the paint pens and your stock is marked. I mark one end and saw stock off the opposite unmarked end but, if you lack self-discipline, make stripes the length of the stock so it's marked down to the last, tiny fragment.

 

[bentprop]

A drill stand is a great help,if you can't read the numbers,a wipe with white enamel makes them stand out.
Also,you can get a set of 3 loupes quite cheaply in most modelshops.
I also use a magnifier headband with 3x magnification,very handy when centre popping.