Cheap Reversible Threading Attachment?

[Boyan Silyavski]

Hi,

i will have to obtain a threading attachment, its not for production jobs, will be attached to my small mini mill BFE65 and used mostly for m10 and M8 , mild steel. And may be M4 eventually which i do in the thousands but till now using Makita cordless driver cause they are in brass and this way seems faster

Main problem being is that i discovered that on my belt grinder project, M10 and M8 have to be perfectly square for the rollers to be square to plates. And thats quite time consuming to do by hand.


I looked here and there but dont have the money for brand reversible heads.

Cheapest i found are the Soba, then slightly more expensive the red Vertex and then even more expensive the silver Vertex ones. /Chronox web site/

Any thoughts on that? Somebody have one of these? Do they work well? Of course i will be using brand machine taps and use the attachment on the mini mill.

[komatias]

The red vertex is for drill presses and is pretty long, I have varying degree of success in using it on my knee mill. You will need to drop the speed to around 100rpm and use machine taps with a spiral flute. To get it to reveres you really need to yank the quill back.

The soba looks interesting in that it has a double speed reverse.

[sinnsvak]

Hi mr.

You clearly have to design and make a flexible paralell-arm that you can attach to your coordless drill. ;)


On a serious note, I have used one in work a few times, none exactly one of the ones you listed, but it was not quite smooth in use. I am sure you have considered using a thread mill?

[Boyan Silyavski]

The red vertex is for drill presses and is pretty long, I have varying degree of success in using it on my knee mill. You will need to drop the speed to around 100rpm and use machine taps with a spiral flute. To get it to reveres you really need to yank the quill back.

The soba looks interesting in that it has a double speed reverse.

So they are long. I have not considered this. Unfortunately the mill is MT1 shank and all of these are at least MT2, so either i use adapter/ even longer/ or i take out the shank and figure to make MT1 for it

Hi mr.

You clearly have to design and make a flexible paralell-arm that you can attach to your cordless drill. ;)


On a serious note, I have used one in work a few times, none exactly one of the ones you listed, but it was not quite smooth in use. I am sure you have considered using a thread mill?

I have not considered the tread mill till now. I am contemplating laser cutting the pieces and then just finishing them off on the mill, so not sure how that hole edge hardening will do with the thread mill. Thing is its not important the hole place, just its exact squareness to plate.


Now i see in the description these heads adjust to hole misplacement? What that is? So they will not thread true square? Explanation what i am doing: i have the threaded hole and there M10 shoulder screw goes. So 2 bearings and aluminum wheel go on that shoulder screw. If not perpendicular to plate belt goes left or right, so not good

[komatias]

MT1 will struggle with bigger threads.

What the misplaced bit means it's that it can allow the tap to float radially to account for you not having the spindle directly above the hole. The perpendicularity of the thread is governed by you drill press or mill being in tram.

[mekanik]

As a rule you usually find there is considerable play between hole & thread and a collared screw will align itself square to the plate surface.
Mike

[magicniner]

I use my red vertex if I have a lot of large holes to tap, it adds about eight inches plus tooling under the quill and the reverse isn't very sensitive, I use it on a floor standing mill drill that's bigger than me so clearance, sensitivity and power aren't issues.
There are a lot of good solutions using arms resembling angle-poise lamps that allow the use of electric or pneumatic tools and the only dedicated bench space is the arm mounting point,

- Nick

[Boyan Silyavski]

Ok. Thanks.

Obviously number 1 solution would be on a big mill like that bellow, though i have to go to my friend Jeff to do that on his bridgeport



Next seems the BFE is too short for that attachments:



That all leaves me to use this:



or make from this/the one on right on first photo/ something like the tapping fixture on second photo and power it by my cordless driver and use its clutch against tapp breakage. that seems to be the fastest way to tap correctly, as i can speed the driver on exit just using the trigger and can change direction for a second

[komatias]

Boyan,

the tapping fixture you show, last one, is really handy for making good threaded holes. I have one and prefer it for small parts than the autoreverse tool